Bond University DOCTORAL THESIS Tuo Mao: the Operational History of the People's Liberation Army Andrew, Martin Award date: 2009 Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal. TUO MAO: THE OPERATIONAL HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY By MARTIN KENNETH ANDREW B.A. Hons (Deakin), M.A. (Northern Territory University) A Thesis Submitted to Bond University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences 26 May 2008 ii BOND UNIVERSITY CANDIDATE’S CERTIFICATE I certify that the thesis entitled Tuo Mao: The Operational History of the People’s Liberation Army and submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, is the result of my own research, except where otherwise acknowledged, and that this thesis (or any part of the same) has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other university or institution. Signed………………………………. Date……………………………….... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures iv Acknowledgements v A Note of Sources and Transliteration vi Summary vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 37 Creation of a Red Army: The Arming of the Chinese Communist Party 1919-1927 Chapter 2 56 Annei Rangwei Chapter 3 129 The Operational Art Formalised and Tested 1935 - 1949 Chapter 4 168 The Human Element: Operational Art and Tactics Become Moribund 1953 - 1979 Chapter 5 242 Laying the Foundations: The Rise of the PLA’s Operational Art in the Post Sino-Vietnamese War Period Chapter 6 269 The Future of the PLA Conclusion 298 Appendices 307 Bibliography 327 iv LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES 1. PLA Infantry Company November 1950 181 2. PAVN and PLA Armour Units, 1979 220 3. 1954 PLA Infantry Battalion 227 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to my thesis supervisor, Dr Rosita Dellios, for her perceptive guidance and her unstinting support; and to Professor Mark Elvin, Professor Emeritus at the Australian National University who has been a mentor, friend and an inexhaustible source of advice to me for many years. The thesis could not have been contemplated, let alone completed, without his encouragement. I am also grateful to the staff at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and the libraries at Harvard University for their assistance during my period at Fairbank as an affiliate in research; Dr Harlan Jencks who has provided invaluable assistance and was the first to present my work on the People’s Liberation Army; Mr Joe Bermudez Jr and Mr Stephen L. Sewell who provided me with invaluable material and assistance throughout the research and writing of the thesis, Mr David Fletcher of the Tank Museum, Bovington, United Kingdom, who provided material on British armoured car operations in pre-Second World War Shanghai, Warrant Officer Class 2 Ian Kuring who has been a mentor and provided critical comments and assistance in my research, writing and presentations of my research. I thank Ms Wan Wong of the National Library of Australia for her support throughout the thesis; the staff at the Australian Army’s Infantry Museum, especially Captain John Land; and Mr Mike Etzel of the Australian War Memorial for his advice and assistance. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge two people who greatly assisted me during the research and passed away before the thesis was completed. These two gentlemen were the late Professor Frederic Wakeman Jr of the University of California, Berkeley, and the late Mr Peter Labbett of London. The thesis could not have been completed without the assistance of these two gentlemen. Finally, thanks go to my family: my brother who allowed me to use his personal library; and my wife and children, who endured my dedication to research and writing for the duration of this PhD commitment. vi A NOTE ON SOURCES AND TRANSLITERATION Sources The most important sources of public domain intelligence and commentary on China have until recently originated outside China. The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) stopped supplying university libraries with translated material in 1997 and a primary source of material from China was lost to researchers. Defence and defence- related material is readily available from China but there is a lack of qualified translators in this field. I have been fortunate in acquiring a source of Chinese defence magazines and have been translating these regularly since October 2003, presenting the results in GI Zhou Newsletter which I publish. This is the only source of English-language information on many Chinese weapons systems and articles on the PLA available to researchers in the field. The Russian translations have been almost all done by Stephen L. Sewell, to whom I am indebted. Transliteration Chinese names and terminology are rendered in China’s official pinyin transliteration system. The exceptions are: (i) Source citations where names appear in the older Wade-Giles or other systems; (ii) The use of the name ‘Canton’ instead of ‘Guangzhou’ in the ‘Canton Commune’, a nomenclature which is also consistent the familiar name of Manchuria for dongbei, and Tibet instead of Xizang; and (iii) The names of historical persons, such as Sun Tzu and Sun Yat-sen. vii SUMMARY Tuo Mao translates literally as ‘shedding feathers’ but in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) it is the euphemism for removing the last vestiges of Mao Zedong’s vision for China’s armed forces. Mao envisaged letting an enemy strike deep into China and then be destroyed by a vast militia force using ‘People’s War’. His vision, to which the PLA only paid lip service, has been replaced by one employing modern combined arms forces, operating modular independent battle groups able to fight on and outside China’s land borders, hence the term ‘Shedding Mao’. It is the central argument of this thesis that by studying the operational history of the People’s Liberation Army, it can be proven that its operational art was forged in the period 1928-1937 and based on the Soviet Union’s doctrine of operational theory, continuing to this day. The significance of the thesis is that it revises and updates conventional thinking among external analysts about China’s guiding defence philosophy. This thesis shows that the doctrine of Active Defence has been the overriding concern of the PLA since 1950 and not any form of People’s War. Active Defence is based on three basic principles: no provocation of other nations; no bases anywhere on foreign soil; and no seizure of territory. The PLA’s articulated doctrine in the 1950s was to ‘Protect the North and Defend the South’. In the 1960s this changed to ‘Lure the Enemy Deep into the Country’ in order to crush him with ‘People’s War’. In the 1970s, this became ‘Prepare to Fight Early and Fight Big’. By using examples of the PLA in battle this thesis shows how the doctrine changed in light of failures in battle. The post-Mao reorganisation of the PLA to rectify these faults turned it into a modern military force, building on this legacy by transforming itself into a hardened and networked military. The PLA has now reached a stage of its history where it can fully implement its operational art that took root in the theories espoused in the 1920s and 1930s through the Soviet model, and tried to be implemented in the 1950s and 1960s only to be thwarted by the Cultural Revolution. The People’s Liberation Army’s operational art, this thesis demonstrates, has now come of age. 1 Introduction Without a militia, our regular army would be like a river without a source, a tree without roots, or a general with only one arm, and thus could never fight a genuine people’s war . With the help of the regional forces and the broad masses of militiamen in battles, the main forces can spare a free hand to form a powerful ‘fist’, seeking and creating advantageous opportunities to fight concentrated battles of annihilation.1 People’s war is used to cover the concept of a just war - one fought by the entire nation with honour - versus an unjust war - a war which runs contrary to the principles of China’s defence posture and national interests.2 An operational history is defined here as the history of how an organisation was structured, how it conducted its day-to-day activities, and how it acted upon policy decisions. It is the contention and central argument of this thesis that by studying the operational history of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), it may be argued that the operational art of the PLA was forged in the period 1928-1937, was based on the Soviet Union’s doctrine of operational theory, and that this continues unto the present. 1 . Mao Zedong quoted in Jencks, H. From Muskets to Missiles: Politics and Professionalism in the Chinese Army, 1945 -1981, Westview Press, Boulder, 1982, p. 174. 2 . Senior Colonel Hua Liuhu, PLA specialist on strategy and security, speaking to the United States Command and General Staff College, 8 January 2000, in Sewell, S.L. Chinese Military Strategy, p. 3. 2 David Shambaugh, amongst others, criticised studies of the Chinese military as lacking sufficient theoretic frameworks and comparative perspectives.3 He also noted that PLA studies came mainly from experts in war colleges or think tanks with military connections only.4 The theoretical framework of most scholars may well have been flawed unintentionally by being filtered through the perspective of a large high resource military like the United States, which has overplayed the power of the PLA in the region.