Chinese Military Reaffirms Pledge to Develop Western Frontier

In line with China’s western development strategy promulgated by the Chinese headship in 1999, the current senior military leadership in China has called on the military to redouble their efforts towards contributing to develop the western regions. In a significant statement made by Xu Qiliang, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission—the highest state military organ commanding China’s entire armed forces, it has been averred that the military should prioritise addressing issues that affect their most immediate interests. While speaking at a meeting in Beijing devoted to addressing the cause of bolstering the PLA’s role in the development of China’s west, Xu “ordered the military to make utmost efforts to maintain border security, enhance solidarity between the military, local governments and the public, as well as to uphold ethnic solidarity.”

What appears to emerge is that the new Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping is continuing China’s previous administration’s policy of ensuring that the western development strategy continues, which further would guarantee its firm control over regions in western China. Besides, a senior officer with the PLA’s General Staff Headquarters, Wu Xihua, affirmed at a press conference in Beijing that the basic duty of the armed forces is to fight wars, while its mission in times of peace is to prepare for war.

In the decade of the 1990s, the Chinese leadership was increasingly perturbed by the growing disproportion between the developing and prosperous eastern regions as opposed to the scant development occurring in its west. In fact, the major cause of concern was the deteriorating trend in development. As a measure to address this issue, the Chinese government adopted the “Great Western Development” strategy in 1999. Among the many facets of this strategy were providing preferential policy treatment to the western region, relaxed taxation rates, land use rights, easier availability of bank loans and aiding fiscal transfers to western China.

More significantly, the Chinese government has invested heavily on the logistics and infrastructure development through western China. From a military perspective, this infrastructure and logistics build-up shall double up critically as base support for the PLA and shall vitally contributed towards improving the rapid deployment capability of China’s integrated forces, particularly the ability to swiftly manoeuvre heavy equipment to and from the region.

In this reference, the recent comment made by Xu Qiliang stating that “the prosperity, development and stability of western regions are of strategic importance to national security and development” only tends to regurgitate that thought. The strategy to accentuate development of China’s western frontier, which crucially includes the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) has been well conceived and executed. Today, the 13th and 14th combined Corps falling under the Chengdu Military Region vouches PLA’s firm grip over Tibet. In fact, Xu Qiliang urged the military to be fully aware that helping develop China’s west will boost the military’s capacity to carry out diversified tasks.

The PLA’s role in western China, elaborated by Xu only tends to reiterate what has officially been stated by China in April 2013 when it issued its eighth defence white paper since 1998 putting forth security challenges in times of peace and more importantly outlining “diversified employment of its armed forces” to cope with these challenges. The Xi Jinping administration holds that fundamentally, the diversified employment of the armed forces is meant to safeguard national territorial sovereignty, as well as provide firm security guarantees. The diversified employment of Chinese armed forces aims to contain crises, strengthen combat-readiness, readily respond to and resolutely deter any provocative action which undermines China’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and firmly safeguard China’s core national interests.

Chen Zhou, a Senior Fellow with the PLA’s Military Science Academy, who also happens to be one among a team of experts who prepared this defence document, states that although China insists on a peaceful path of development, it will “never trade sovereignty, security and territorial integrity, which are its core interests.” This should be regarded as a very clear indicator of China’s future policy on what it terms as the areas of its “core interests”. In previous editions of China’s White Paper on National Defence, Beijing has cited four areas to be of “core interest”— namely, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and the South China Sea.

The PLA aims to maintain security while speeding up transformation of combat effectiveness and build a system of modern military forces with Chinese characteristics by enhancing military strategic guidance and diversifying the ways of employing armed forces. The mandate of the PLA remains to guard against and resist aggression, contain what China terms as “separatist forces” and safeguard border, coastal and territorial air security. In this exercise, the People’s Armed Police Force (PAPF) is tasked to provide crucial assistance to the PLA by performing guard duties during peacetime and assisting the PLA in defensive operations during war.

However, it would only be apposite to state that in terms of balanced regional growth, the western development strategy has not yet achieved its aims given that the contribution of China’s west to its overall economic statistical chart has not been substantial. For this strategy to bear fruit there is a pressing need for China to re-orientate its internal political and economic strategy to one that would bring about all-inclusive growth, political and religious emancipation and prosperity not just for the Han Chinese but for every single minority ethnic community residing within China—and not simply reiterate assertion of military control and repression.

The author is a Senior Fellow at CLAWS. Views expressed are personal.