One road: Stick unswervingly to the road
of building a better army the Chinese way
On May 13, 1978, while talking to the
leaders of the General Staff Headquarters, Comrade Deng Xiaoping offered
his weighty advice in connection with the damage inflicted on army
building during the "Cultural Revolution": "Directing war by such a
colossal commanding organ is bound to be defeated".
With "reducing bloatedness" as the
point of making breakthrough, Deng Xiaoping cut down the number of the
servicemen drastically and promoted the Chinese way of building a better
army therefrom. The armed forces were downsized and reorganized for three
times in the early years of the 1980s, resulting in its total number being
reduced from 6.11 million at peak time in 1975 to 3 million in
1985.
Would such a drastic reduction weaken
the battle effectiveness of the army? Deng Xiaoping said with emotion:
"Even if the war is going to break out, we will still go on with 'reducing
bloatedness'. Being bloated is a reflection of our poor ability in
directing a war." He even asked a question in reply: "Can a puffy guy
fight better in war？"
People also noticed that the grand
disarmament in China was not a simple reduction of military personnel, but
a major strategically structural readjustment of the armed forces. Along
with the disarmament, various new arms such as the army aviation force,
the naval shipboard aircraft force, the electronic confrontation units and
reserve forces were established at the same time. With the formation of
the group army, the special forces in the army has outnumbered the
infantry.
In 1987, the Central Military
Commission pointed out specifically that the military training should
center on the training of combined campaign and tactics. In 1988, Deng
Xiaoping emphasized at the Enlarged Meeting of the Central Military
Commission that boosting the battle effectiveness must be made the
starting point and the goal of the military reform and army building as
well as the basic criterion for testing various
jobs.
In the days when Deng Xiaoping was
presiding over the day-to-day work of the Central Military Commission, the
people's army, developing synchronically with the republic, moved steadily
forward towards a fewer but better, combined and highly efficient army as
a result of its historical leaps in terms of the improved quality of
military personnel, the highly effective establishment, the progress by
leaps and bounds of the conventional weaponry, and the vital breakthrough
in defense-related cutting-edge technology.
(August 20, PLA
Daily)
