Are China’s hawks actually the PLA elite after all? [Revised]
Posted: December 5, 2013 Filed under: Academic debates, Fake PLA generals?, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, PLA & PLAN | Tags: CCP-PLA, Chinese military, Chinese public opinion, civil-military relations, 罗援, Dai Xu, external propaganda, external propaganda experts, Fravel, General Liu Yuan, Han Xudong, hawkish faction, hawkish generals, Justine Zheng Ren, Liu Yawei, Liu Yazhou, Liu Yuan, military propaganda, National Defense Education, National Defense University, PLA hardliners, PLA hawks, political warfare, public opinion warfare, Swaine, Yawei Liu, Yellow Sea, 刘亚洲, 国防教育, 忧患意识, 戴旭 1 Comment[Updated 17 Dec: As with most things on here, this was bashed out hastily in the not-so-early hours of a morning, so i’ve taken the liberty of revising and adding some bits as i read through it two weeks later. In particular i felt the need to add in the various things i agree with from Liu and Ren’s excellent article, in addition to the criticisms i made.]
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In an upcoming Journal of Contemporary China article addressing the always fascinating question of PLA officers’ belligerent media statements, Yawei Liu and Justine Zheng Ren advance exactly the opposite case to the one made here earlier this year. They argue that military commentators’ media statements represent the “consensus” voice of the PLA, fighting to influence the CCP’s foreign policy.
Dr Liu, who directs the Carter Center’s China Program, happens to be the brother of General Liu Yazhou, most recently of Silent Contest fame. General Liu himself even features in the article, but references to his thinking are indirect (“General Liu seems to share the conviction that…”), presumably meaning that the two brothers have not talked over these work-related issues. Still, if anyone is in a position to knock the teeth out of my “propaganda, not policy” argument, Dr Liu should be the man.
To briefly recap, my argument was that, based on the backgrounds and affiliations of the main “hawks”, the belligerent military voices in the Chinese media are largely those of nominated propaganda/publicity experts (the two terms conflated as 宣传), whose job is to mould a positive image of the PLA among the domestic population and augment the military’s capabilities by shaping international audiences’ perceptions.[1]
Propaganda as Policy? Explaining the PLA’s “Hawkish Faction” (Part Two)
Posted: August 13, 2013 Filed under: Academic debates, Diaoyu, Fake PLA generals?, Global Times, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, PLA & PLAN, South China Sea, State media | Tags: Baidu Index, China-Philippines relations, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese media, Chinese military, Chinese nationalism, Chinese public opinion, 环球网, 环球时报, 罗援, Dai Xu, deterrence, Diaoyu, Diaoyu Islands, 钓鱼岛, 鹰派, 黄岩岛, Global Times, informatized warfare, Jamestown Foundation, Luo Yuan, military propaganda, PLA hawks, propaganda, scarborough shoal, Senkaku, Senkaku Islands, Sino-Japanese relations, south china sea, 忧患意识, 戴旭 3 CommentsHere is Part 2 on the PLA hawkish faction from China Brief, with added links to sources, and a couple of graphs from the utterly awesome Baidu Index (big hat tip to Kaiser Kuo).
I’d also like to add my thanks to Xuan Cheng, John Garnaut, James Barker, Mark Stokes and Taylor Fravel for discussions and tips on this topic. They don’t necessarily agree with the content of the article.
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Propaganda as Policy? Explaining the PLA’s “Hawkish Faction” (Part Two)
Publication: China Brief Volume: 13 Issue: 16
August 9, 2013
By: Andrew Chubb
If outspoken Chinese military officers are, as Part One suggested, neither irrelevant loudmouths, nor factional warriors, nor yet the voice of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on foreign policy, and are instead experts in the PLA-CCP propaganda system, then what might explain the bad publicity they often generate for China? This article explores how the activities of China’s military hawks may contribute to the regime’s domestic and international goals. On a general level, the very appearance of a hawkish faction—the “opera” that Luo Yuan has described—serves the domestic purposes of promoting national unity (Global Times, May 4). By amplifying threat awareness and countering perceived Western plots to permeate the psyche of the Chinese populace and army, the “hawks” direct public dissatisfaction with the policy status quo away from the system as a whole.
In specific crises, such as the standoff at Scarborough Shoal last year or in the wake of the Diaoyu Islands purchase, hard-line remarks from uniformed commentators serve to rally domestic public opinion behind the prospect of military action, instil confidence in the PLA’s willingness to fight over the issue and deter China’s adversary. By amplifying the possibility of otherwise irrational Chinese military action and inevitable escalation should Beijing’s actions be interfered with, they have contributed to a thus-far successful effort to convince the Philippines and Japan to accept the new status quo around Scarborough Shoal and the Diaoyu Islands.
A “strategic communication” with India, via Luo Yuan?
Posted: July 6, 2013 Filed under: Academic debates, China-India, PLA & PLAN | Tags: AK Antony, Chinese military, diplomacy, hawkish faction, Indian media, Luo Yuan, military political work, PLA, PLA hawks, political warfare, PRC-India, Sino-Indian relations, strategic communication Leave a commentTo those people who subscribe to this blog via email, thankyou and i’m sorry — you guys always miss out on various additions and clarifications (e.g. headings, signpost & summary sentences) to the shoddy initial versions i post. If you’re interested in the topics but find my chaotic writing confusing, i’d always recommend waiting a few hours and then viewing via the web, rather than email.
If it wasn’t clear, the point of yesterday’s typically unwieldy post was actually quite simple: Luo Yuan, and the other “hawks”, are probably in the game of military political work, rather than policy competition.
With impeccable timing, Luo Yuan has provided a lovely example to illustrate this. [UPDATE JULY 8: Not really an example at all, it turns out.]
On Thursday, only hours before AK Antony arrived in Beijing for the first visit by an Indian Defense Minister for seven years, Luo held a press briefing and told India to be “very cautious in what it does and what it says.” [UPDATE: The briefing was not about India, and Luo only commented on India when asked by a journalist to do so. I have been told Luo made no attempt to raise the topic of India. Thus, the working hypothesis this piece was written under — that this was a carefully timed piece of strategic communication aimed at India — is invalid. It was almost certainly just a coincidence that Luo commented on India just before the Defense Minister’s visit. However, this doesn’t diminish the likelihood that Luo Yuan is in the business of political communication, only that this particular action was targeted at India.]
Major-General Luo Yuan’s “real and fake” dove-hawk opera
Posted: July 5, 2013 Filed under: Academic debates, China's foreign relations, Diaoyu, Global Times, PLA & PLAN | Tags: CCP-PLA, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese military, Chinese nationalism, Chinese strategy, 环球时报, Dai Xu, dovish faction, 钓鱼岛, Global Times, hawkish faction, Hu Jintao, Huanqiu Shibao, Luo Yuan, PLA hardliners, PLA hawks, PLA-CCP relations, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Sinocism, Wang Hongguang 5 CommentsAs usual, I should be doing other things, but i couldn’t let this pass into the shadows: a chat session between Major-General (Retd) Luo Yuan and netizens from Huanqiu Wang (Global Times Website) in which Luo says the PRC’s debates between hawkish and dovish factions are “mixture of truth and deceit, real and fake”.
An English-language summary of the exchange was published on Chinascope in May, but that excluded many interesting parts, including, crucially, the ending. The more i read through the original, in fact, the more it seemed that just about everything in the article was pertinent.
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Luo Yuan’s hopes for the masses
It starts almost exactly where i left off in this previous piece, discussing the strong market appeal of the PLA’s “hawkish” academic corps. The Huanqiu transcript claims to be a “actual record” of the chat, though the perfect, formal language the netizens allegedly used indicates that they were carefully vetted and edited. With questions prefaced by lines like, “Our country is currently situated in a period of complicated external circumstances,” we might legitimately wonder whether there were any netizens involved in the production of the questions at all.
Huanqiu netizen: China has always practiced peaceful coexistence, but in recent years our country has faced challenges everywhere in upholding territorial sovereignty. A significant number of the Chinese masses appeal for the coming of a “Flying General” from the poem line, “But when the Flying General is looking after the Dragon City / No barbarian horseman may cross the Yin Mountains.“[1] May I please ask, General Luo, how do you view these kinds of appeals?
“Flying General” refers to Li Guang 李广, the early Han Dynasty commander known for striking terror into the hearts of the Xiongnu raiders to the northwest. This raises a basic tension in China’s contemporary nationalist identity, between peaceful coexistence and merciless vengefulness and exclusion. Chairman Mao, of course, explained this away with his famous 1939 dictum, “If others do not assault me, I will not assault them; if others assault me, I will certainly assault them,” (人不犯我我不犯人,人若犯我我必犯人). Perhaps not surprisingly, that phrase became a slogan for destroying all kinds of real and fabricated enemies during Mao’s reign.
So, how does Luo Yuan view the masses’ alleged desire for a messianic “Flying General” figure to fight those fearsome Filipino raiders?
The enigma of CEFC’s Chairman Ye
Posted: June 7, 2013 Filed under: PLA & PLAN | Tags: CAIFC, CEFC, Chairman Ye, China CEFC Energy Company, Chinese military, Daiwah, enemy work, external propaganda, General Political Department Liaison Department, Huaxin, Kissinger, liaison work, Long Tao, Nishan Forum, PLA General Political Department, Xing Yunming, Ye Fei, Ye Jianming, Ye Xuanning, Zhenrong, 华信能源有限公司, 叶简明, 叶选宁, 叶主席 16 CommentsUPDATE JANUARY 2017: Lots more information about Chairman Ye has come to light, including confirmation that he is not Ye Jianying’s grandson (but he is in business with Marshal Ye’s granddaughter). Read the latest update here first.
UPDATE APRIL 2016: The following odyssey through the business and ideological world of CEFC, an apparent platform of the Liaison Department of the PLA General Political Department (GPD-LD), was co-written with John Garnaut. Based on new information received, I now believe it’s unlikely that Chairman Ye Jianming is a grandson of Marshal Ye Jianying. Interestingly, there may be a connection with Marshal Ye’s family by marriage, which could be confirmed in coming months or years. The evidence of the young Chairman’s connection with the GPD-LD, however, remains strong, and has been anecdotally supported by people in a position to know. Thus, the new information doesn’t substantially alter the story below, just our theory on who exactly the Chairman’s father may be.*
Read on if you dare…
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The enigma of CEFC’s Chairman Ye
By Andrew Chubb & John Garnaut
Senior Colonel Dai Xu, of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, apologised profusely for running late as he lowered his tiny frame into a plastic chair.
Lieutenant-General Wang Hongguang blasts PLA pundits’ “interference” in decisions and deployments
Posted: April 29, 2013 Filed under: China-Japan, Diaoyu, Global Times, PLA & PLAN | Tags: Chinese army propaganda, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese media, Chinese military, Chinese nationalism, Dai Xu, Diaoyu Islands, fire control radar, General Liu Yuan, Huanqiu, Huanqiu Shibao, Liu Yuan, Luo Yuan, Peng Guangqian, PLA, propaganda, radar incident, Senkaku, Wang Hongguang, Xi Jinping, Zhang Zhaozhong 6 Comments[I spent hours on this post, then WordPress kindly lost it without a trace, hence this is a bit out-of-date, sorry]
The April 20 edition of the Huanqiu Shibao (Global Times) carried an article by recently-retired PLA Lieutenant-General Wang Hongguang, directly criticizing the Chinese media’s hawkish military commentators.
The article is brief — indeed so brief that the obligatory preface declaring support for the pundits’ patriotic mission does not even run to a full sentence:
In recent years, military affairs experts have frequently appeared on TV and in all kinds of publications, with the positive effect of strengthening the masses’ national defense awareness and arousing patriotism, but it cannot be denied that some have said off-key things, things that have misled the audience and been irresponsible.
Lt-Gen Wang, who now serves as Vice President of the PLA’s Academy of Military Science, made it quite clear that by “military affairs experts” he was referring to fellow PLA academics, particularly Zhang Zhaozhong, Luo Yuan, and of course Dai Xu.
It’s unusual to hear a PLA academic criticize his comrades in public; even more so for someone of such high rank. But most remarkable was Lt-Gen Wang’s claim that PLA academics’ war talk is “interfering” with the CCP-PLA leadership’s decision-making, citing the specific example of Sino-Japanese relations:
Some experts have inappropriately made comparisons of China and Japan’s military strength, claiming “China and Japan will inevitably go to war”, and that this “would not significantly affect our period of strategic opportunity”, [thus] inciting public sentiment and causing some interference with our high-level policy decision-making and deployments.
Wang Hongguang is in a position to know. Until recently he was Deputy Commander of the PLA’s Nanjing Military Region.
“Public opinion warfare to smear military commentators”: my plot to contain China exposed
Posted: August 1, 2013 | Author: Andrew Chubb | Filed under: Academic debates, Comment threads, Fake PLA generals?, Global Times, PLA & PLAN, Weibo | Tags: Chinese internet, Chinese military, Chinese nationalism, Chinese news portals, 环球网, 环球时报, 罗援, Dai Xu, external propaganda experts, 舆论战, 鹰派, Global Times, hawkish faction, hawkish generals, Huanqiu, military propaganda, Netease, PLA hawks, PRC news portals, propaganda, public opinion warfare, Sohu, 张召忠, 戴旭 | 6 CommentsChina.com special topic: Are the PLA’s hawkish statements just propaganda?
In my first foray into mainland China’s propaganda system since winning a “second-class prize” in a television language competition heavily rigged in my favour, the previous post (written for the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief) was picked up by mainland online media on Tuesday, and run under headlines including:
I apologize in advance for the infelicitousness of this post, but i am a student and this is a blog, so can’t take these things too seriously 😉
My personal favourite headline was:
Since i now speak for “America” (or is it that i am America?), it is high time i actually went there.
Read the rest of this entry »