A.A. Kokoshin China`s System of Strategic LeadershipНазад
A.A. Kokoshin China`s System of Strategic Leadership
Translated by Robert R. Love
Foreign Military Studies Office
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
Topics covered in this chapter:
o The Central Military Commission`s dominant role as a state and party body;
o Defense Minister`s place in the Central Military Commission;
o Significance of the "large military districts";
o Functions of the Main Political Directorate of the People`s Liberation Army (PLA);
o Specifics of the PLA`s General Staff and how it compared to the General Staff of the Workers` and Peasants` Red Army [RKKA] during the Great Patriotic War;
o The lack of a unified command in the PLA;
o Unique features of the Chinese armed forces as an institution of the party and the state;
o Importance of Mao Zedong`s military-political legacy and the way in which he used military force;
o Creation of a modern Chinese armed force starting in the late 1990s.
The strategic leadership system of the People`s Republic of China differs significantly from that of the United States and other Western countries (and from India`s, whose strategic leadership system is externally analogous to the British system), and also from the system that existed in the Soviet Union.1
