@johnfsullivan
Former U.S. Army China Foreign Area Officer currently studying ancient Chinese military & strategic texts and arguing for the need to study and debate them more broadly within our own military PME and academic institutions.
which determines that our struggle and competition with them are IRRECONCILABLE (不可调和) ... We will not change our banner and sails, and they will not change their tune. Our struggle and competition is thus inevitably long-term, complex, and sometimes extremely sharp.”
Deng Xiaoping (1974): “The contradiction between the two superpowers [U.S. & USSR] is IRRECONCILABLE (不可调和); one either overpowers the other, or is overpowered.”
Xi Jinping (2012): “Our social system and ideology are fundamentally different from those of Western countries,
While Kissinger remains the most famous modern American strategist within the name dropping set in China, amongst serious Chinese strategic thinkers, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and particularly this 1997 book of his, appears to be much more influential in their own writings.
Liu Huaqing (2001): “Defense development is a gradual accumulation process. We cannot ignore it for a decade or two and then rush to address it when funds are available. Many development projects have long cycles, and if we don’t prioritize key projects, the gap will widen.”
establishing an advantage in material and spiritual forces through the development of comprehensive national power, influencing the adversary’s will and determination, and compelling the adversary to abandon intentions that harm one’s interests.”
— Deterrence Strategy (1989)
adversaries psychologically. The comprehensive national power competition strategy does not aim to physically destroy an adversary’s military, political, economic, or technological strength. Its fundamental focus remains on the adversary’s psychological factors,
“Comprehensive national power competition strategy is to compel adversaries not to take military action against oneself while striving to achieve predetermined strategic objectives through non-war means. It uses strength as the material foundation for deterring adversaries. It emphasizes defeating …
while also requiring corresponding changes in the social superstructure.”
Xi Jinping believes this is an objective truth, as described earlier by his chief ideologue, Wang Huning. We now have a complete English translation of Wang's major work on this subject:
www.amazon.com/dp/B0FNMTFK4...
production cannot accommodate the increasingly powerful social productive forces it has created. Ultimately, the development of social productive forces will inevitably break through the capitalist mode of production, transitioning to a newer mode of production,
This inevitability stems from the internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, namely the contradiction between the private ownership of social means of production and socialized large-scale production. Capitalism has created powerful productive forces, but the capitalist mode of
Wang Huning (1994): “Marxism first asserts that a communist society is an objective necessity, not a subjective desire of individuals. The internal driving force of historical development & the contradictory movement of various social relations inevitably lead to realization of a communist society.
"If a situation arises during combat where the military commander and the political commissar have differing opinions, the responsibility falls to the one whose role pertains to the issue [and] anyone at any time has the right to report the situation to a higher organization."
"The division of responsibilities among commanders specifically means that, under the unified collective leadership of the Party committee, military administrative issues are handled by the mil. commander, while political work is organized and implemented by the pol. commissar."
“What if, during combat, the division commander orders to go east, but the political commissar orders to go west?”
An explanation of the roles of the operational commander & political commissar within PLA ranks from a 2000 book, "Heart-to-Heart Talks with Leading Cadres" ...
I’ve posted a draft translation of this book in the below link. The translation is decent, but not perfect. It includes the original Chinese text so you can check the accuracy if there are any passages you want to cite. www.academia.edu/143606004/De...
You then start seeing it seep into military doctrine. The first version of the Science of Military Strategy (1987), makes no reference to CNP, but the 1999 version starts including it, and every subsequent update to the text discusses CNP as the basis for strategic competition.
Or Wu Chunqiu's book on how CNP can be applied at the highest strategic levels: "Building and employing CNP to achieve grand strategy objectives is the core content of grand strategy and one of its fundamental characteristics distinguishing it from other strategies."
Following this text from these three members of the Academy of Military Science (AMS) you start seeing a lot more theoretical work coming out of AMS on this subject. For example, Huang Shuofeng's extensive study on both the components of CNP and the math necessary to calculate it
Confrontation in the CNP era, the authors argued, would primarily takes the form of competition. This includes intense military, economic, and technological wars globally, with a focus on qualitative superiority and high-tech development, not just military quantity.
CNP strategy places greater emphasis on the combined use of both "material weapons" (economy, technology, military) and "spiritual weapons" (politics, ideology, national spirit and will, information) to achieve deterrence goals.
A key function they take from Sun Tzu is "first make oneself invincible" (先为不可胜). This means adopting a long-term perspective, building comprehensive national power (including military), and emphasizing a "deterrence image" rather than just temporary military advantages.
The fundamental goals of CNP competition are "security and development." This strategy seeks security through national development, fostering a virtuous cycle: Development → deterrence → peace → new development → new deterrence → new peace.
The Comprehensive National Power (CNP) competition strategy, therefore, should be a new national strategy for China during peacetime. It advocated using political, economic, military, technological, and diplomatic forces together, rather than relying solely on military means.
Modern threats are comprehensive, extending beyond military to include environment, population, hunger, and economic/technological challenges. Military deterrence alone is often powerless against non-military threats like trade deficits or tech blockades.
Historically, the authors argue, strategic thought progressed from focusing on parts (like sea or air power) to embracing comprehensive approaches, leading to "total war" and "grand strategy" theories. But since the 1980s, the value of pure military deterrence has been challenged
I’m prone to giving Bud Fox a pass on this one. He gives a reasonable summary of Sun Tzu’s force ratio passage from Chap. 3. I’ve seen tenured war college professors mess it up worse. Also, don’t forget the dinner table Clausewitz debate from “Crimson Tide”
There are also collective military writings from other prominent PLA figures not named Mao that should be translated and further studied. These figures and their writings still influence contemporary PLA thinking, but rarely get discussed in the West because we have limited ability to access them.
Much like in the West, there is also a ton of mediocre & uninteresting works, but there is more than enough good material produced in China that we should at least take seriously & study more systematically. To date though, there has been little demand signal to translate any.
China has their own equivalents to military strategy academics like Michael Howard and Colin Gray, but because we don't bother translating anything beyond a few niche texts we continue to think everything about Chinese strategy can be gleaned from Sun Tzu, Mao, and Unrestricted Warfare …
From one of 67 speeches delivered from 2012-2017 found in the book “Xi Jinping on Strengthening and Reviving the Military” —an internal (neibu) document meant for PLA regiment and above commanders only.