Xi Jinping Greatly Expands Chinese Military’s Mandate Beyond Defense, Tells World Not to Worry
A Chinese Communist Party regulation signed by dictator Xi Jinping, whose many titles include chairmanship of the Central Military Commission (CMC), greatly expands the mandate of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to conduct “non-war military activities” – a benign-sounding term that happens to be very similar to the language Russian dictator Vladimir Putin employs to describe his invasion of Ukraine.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Thursday quoted Chinese academics and military experts who scrambled to reassure the world that Xi did not give the PLA a new mandate for conducting offensive military operations beyond China’s borders:
Retired PLA lieutenant colonel Zeng Zhiping, a military law expert at Suzhou City University, said Chinese troops must abide by both the United Nations Charter and local laws when they join peacekeeping missions.
“The CMC has the right to command the PLA to take any tasks at home, sometimes even bypassing domestic law,” Zeng said. “But when Chinese troops want to take part in non-war missions overseas, they should get a legal permit from both the UN Security Council Resolution and host countries.”
Zhou Chenming, a researcher from the Yuan Wang military science and technology think tank in Beijing, said the outline is based on a combination of the “military operations other than war” concept – created by the US in the 1990s – and the PLA’s own operational experiences of recent years.
These reassurances were somewhat undermined by Chinese state media coverage of the new policies, which supposedly enable the military to “defuse risks and challenges, tackle emergencies, protect the safety and property of the people, safeguard China’s sovereignty, security and development interests, as well as maintain global peace and regional stability.” None of that sounds like “non-war activity” conducted entirely within China’s borders by a passive PLA.
The SCMP’s correspondents specifically denied Xi was setting the legal stage for Chinese military aggression against Taiwan or disputed territories in the South China Sea – but they went on to explain that the legal stage is already set for such military actions, thanks to long-standing legislation such as China’s “Anti-Secession Law,” which gives the PLA all the authority it needs to attack Taiwan.
“The mainland doesn’t need to declare war when it’s going to bring Taiwan back. There is no peace across the Taiwan Strait. The civil war between the then-ruling party Kuomintang and the Communist party just halted in 1949, but no ceasefire was announced,” Beijing-based researcher Zhou Chenming explained, somewhat losing the plot about Communist China being a peace-loving nation that only wants to authorize its military to deliver more food to starving people.
Shanghai University law professor Ni Lexiong said Xi’s order was primarily meant to give the PLA more latitude to make war against its own people: “The Chinese Communist Party has accumulated experience in mobilizing troops to help tackle different crises at home in the past decades. The NWMA outline will remind some hostile forces that they will face severe consequences if they want to challenge the legitimacy of the party.”