His push to project power abroad was accompanied by a power play at home. At the core of this vision of national renewal is a loyal, corruption-free military that Xi demands must be prepared to fight and win. The effort includes signature shows of soft power: Xi’s multibillion-dollar “Belt and Road” program to build a global trade and infrastructure network with China at its center, and his “Made in China 2025” plan to turn the country into a high-tech manufacturing giant.īut the boldest stroke is his expansion of China’s hard power, through his remaking of the PLA, the world’s largest fighting force. Xi’s speeches are peppered with references to his “Chinese dream,” where an ancient nation recovers from the humiliation of foreign invasion and retakes its rightful place as the dominant power in Asia. He has abandoned reform architect Deng Xiaoping’s injunction that China should hide its strength and bide its time. Xi is making a series of moves that are transforming both China and the global order. The Chinese leader isn’t just revolutionizing the PLA. (See the interactive version: reut.rs/2Uzr9z4) Operational leadership of naval, missile, air, ground and cyber forces has been separated from administration and training - a structure that Chinese and Western defense analysts say borrows from U.S. A new chain of command leads directly to Xi as chairman of the Central Military Commission, China’s top military decision-making body. He has broken up its vast, Maoist-era military bureaucracy. Xi has accelerated the PLA’s shift to naval power from a traditionally land-based force. It is the biggest overhaul of the PLA since Mao led it to victory in the nation’s civil war and founded the People’s Republic in 1949.
He has donned camouflage fatigues, installed himself as commander-in-chief and taken control of the two million-strong Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army. Xi Jinping, Mao’s latest successor, has taken that dictum to heart. FILE PHOTO: A frontier soldier from the People's Liberation Army jumps through a ring of fire as part of training in Heihe, Heilongjiang province, March 5, 2014.
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