On July 1, 2019, I will take over as director of the Security Studies Program at MIT.

Read the press release here.

I was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation for research in the social science and humanities.

Read the official announcement here and the MIT News story here.

Over at Duck of Minerva, Georgetown University’s Dan Nexon has authored a post with excellent tips for those considering applying to PhD program in Political Science.

Having served on graduate admissions committees, his advice is spot on.

The folks at , a website and research firm that tracks the Chinese media and Internet, published its annual last week. The awards contain a “a list of the best specialist websites, blogs and online sources of information about China.”

Yours truly was listed as one of ten runner-ups for China-related tweeters. The collection of blogs, podcasts, and twitter feeds offers a diverse and impressive amount of information and analysis on all aspects of modern China.

Be sure to check out the complete list — and the winners, and .

I have just received my copy of the second edition of Dennis Blasko’s The Chinese Army Today: Tradition and Transformation for the 21st Century (2nd edition).  For anyone interested in the modernization of China’s armed forces, this book is a “must read.”

The revised edition of The Chinese Army Today has many strengths:

First, the book examines the modernization of China’s ground forces.  Despite the emphasis in current commentary on China’s air and especially naval forces, China’s military remains heavily-dominated by its ground forces, where significant modernization is occurring.  Moreover, these forces play an important role not just in external defense and potential power projection, but also in a variety of domestic missions, including disaster relief and internal security.

Second, the book examines all aspects of China’s army, from doctrine and organization to equipment and training.

Third, the book is ruthlessly based on facts and informed analysis, not speculation.  The author, Dennis Blasko, is a retired U.S. army officer who has spent much of his career studying China’s armed forces and served as an attache in both Beijing and Hong Kong in the 1990s.

 

In this article from the latest issue of Asian Security, I examine the sources of the PLA’s new emphasis on nonwar military operations (not to be confused with “military operations than war” or MOOTW in U.S. doctrine).  In particular, I explore why China’s armed forces have sought to strengthen their ability to conduct noncombat operations, especially domestic ones, even though China’s military modernization for traditional combat operations is far from complete.

I argue that the rise of noncombat operations in China’s military strategy is principally a response to internal threats to regime security that are a byproduct of rapid economic growth.  Although growth is key to the legitimacy of leaders in developing countries, it also creates new sources of domestic unrest and increases the vulnerability of the economy to external shocks, both of which, if unchecked, can harm future growth. As a result, developing countries such as China may use their armed forces to maintain political stability and provide services that the state lacks, such as emergency disaster relief.

This growing role of noncombat operations in China’s military strategy and operations is important for several reasons:

• It demonstrates the continued domestic role for China’s armed forces, which includes the PLA, whose principal mission is external defense, and the paramilitary People’s Armed Police (PAP) charged with maintaining internal stability.
• It indicates that the principal effect of economic growth has not been to identify expansive interests overseas that require new capabilities for offensive operations and long-range combat power projection for their protection. Instead, it has reinforced China’s interest in maintaining a stable external environment abroad and, more importantly, in ensuring domestic stability at home.
• It suggests that the PLA may be devoting fewer resources to long-range power projection than it otherwise might and that such capabilities will grow at a slower rate than they otherwise would.

In addition, the relationship between regime insecurity and military strategy has implications for the study of international relations:

• It identifies a new causal pathway through which domestic politics can influence the goals and content of a state’s military strategy, especially in the developing world.
• It offers an alternative perspective on the relationship between rising powers and the likelihood of armed conflict, focusing on how rapid growth creates new rationales for bolstering internal security and other domestic operations such as disaster relief.

 

 

I have just re-tooled my Chinese foreign policy syllabus for an undergraduate lecture course on the topic.

Like most academic tasks, revising this syllabus was much more time-consuming than I had anticipated.  Moreover, there are never enough lectures to cover all the topics that need to be addressed.  Nevertheless, this version seeks to cover both China’s foreign relations during the Cold War as well as its grand strategy since the end of the Cold War.

Check out the syllabus.

A chapter of mine (co-authored with Alexander Liebman) on the influence of China’s navy has just been published in an edited volume of papers from an annual conference on the People’s Liberation Army.

Read the chapter

Earlier this week, media reports suggested that China had placed a new emphasis on preparing for war in response to recent events in the region, including the disputes in the South China Sea and the “pivot” in U.S. policy from the Middle East to Asia.  According to the AFP, “Hu Jintao…urged the navy to prepare for military combat amid growing regional tensions over maritime disputes and a U.S. campaign to assert itself as a Pacific power.”

The AFP report, however, contained two significant errors.  First, the report stated that Hu’s remarks were delivered at a meeting of the Central Military Commission (CMC), suggesting they were part of a major policy speech.  In fact, as reported in the PLA’s own newspaper (Chinese, English), the Jiefangjun Bao, Hu made the remarks when he and other members of the CMC met with party delegates from the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).  Second, the report mistranslated a key term, junshi douzheng, as “military combat,” implying a new emphasis on preparations to fight a specific war.

Did Hu urge war?  No.

To start, a literal and more accurate translation of junshi douzheng would be “military struggle” or, simply, “warfare.”   In the phrase “preparations for military struggle,” the term refers to the characteristics of future wars that China may have to fight and the implications for the development of operational doctrine and training.  It’s similar to the concept of operational readiness. Nevertheless, it does not refer to a desire to go war, much less preparations for specific combat operations.

By using this phrase, Hu was highlighting the importance of continued naval modernization to ensure that the PLAN would be prepared to fight in conflicts in the future, a goal shared by all military organizations.  The U.S. military, for example, uses similar language to describe its force development goals. The 2010Quadrennial Defense Review described the objectives of America’s defense strategy as follows: “prevail in today’s wars, prevent and deter conflict, prepare to defeat adversaries and succeed in a wide range of contingencies, and preserve and enhance the All-Volunteer Force.”

More generally, the phrase “preparations for military struggle” is a standard, boilerplate formula used in Chinese military writings and speeches by Chinese leaders on military affairs.  As shown in this chart, the phrase appears frequently in articles in the print edition of the Jiefangjun Bao, the PLA’s official newspaper (though, interestingly, its use has been decreasing since 2005).

In addition, the AFP report missed the broader context in which this routine phrase was used.  In particular, Hu urged the PLAN to deepen preparations for military struggle within the broader context of “closely focusing on the main theme of national defense and army-building.” The term “army-building” (jundui jianshe) refers to long-term force development goals, including personnel policies and force structure. Indeed, as shown in the chart, these two phrases are often used together in Chinese statements, as they reflect different aspects of the PLA’s current modernization effort.  For instance, in a September 2011 speech to researchers from the Academy of Military Science, CMC Vice Chairman General Guo Boxiongcalled on researchers “to meet the needs of army building and preparations for military struggle.”

Finally, the timing of Hu’s remarks to the PLAN delegates was probably a coincidence and not linked with the defense talks with the United States or events in the South China Sea in the past year.  Members of the CMC routinely meet with deputies from various parts of the PLA and use the language of army building and preparations for military struggle in their remarks.  This particular meeting occurred alongside an army-wide conference on weapons development that was probably scheduled months in advance, and may explain why the entire CMC met with the PLAN group.

In sum, Hu’s statement didn’t reflect a change in policy or a new emphasis on preparing for war.  His routine statement received more attention than it warranted.

[This post original appear on The Diplomat on December 10, 2011.]

Today, I was featured on the MIT homepage and the subject of a profile by MIT news office.