Interpreting China's military power

"Although inter-state tensions have generally been easing after the Cold War, military power remains a dominant factor in Asian regional politics. As China, operating the world's largest army, grows stronger, there are ongoing debates over the implications for Asian regional security. This book argues that it is imperative to look beyond the empirical observations and conventional materialist reading of Chinese military development to understand its dynamics and directions in doctrinal terms and put it in a readiness context for evaluation." "Military doctrine has long been under-researched and is often treated as a subject separate from force development. But, as this study contends, this factor is necessary for interpreting the making and purposes of China's military power because it forms the intellectual foundation of military structural and hardware development. Without being loaded with political rhetoric, it also communicates to us for what military power is intended. The role of doctrine is reinforced in the context of military readiness, which defines what the army is getting ready for, and how. Force development is evaluated in structural and operational terms." "The importance of this analytical framework based on military doctrine and readiness is demonstrated in a survey of the evolution of Chinese military doctrine and force development. As the Chinese People's Liberation Army has continued to adjust its military structure and operation to follow the doctrinal lead, its switches between local war and total war doctrines have seen corresponding changing emphasis between operational and structural readiness. The current high-technology local war doctrine dictates that China has to focus more on operational readiness. In the information age, this means that, though geographically localised, military conflicts in fact see an expanding battlespace and, buttressed by information technology, operation has to be efficient as well as precise."--BOOK JACKET.