Explainer | China’s Communist Party and the military: who the army reports to and what’s changed under Xi Jinping
- The party and the PLA are entwined and in the early years of its rule, all Communist Party leaders had military experience
- The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 convinced the party it must keep a hold on the military so its rule would not be challenged
This is the third in the South China Morning Post’s series of explainers about China’s Communist Party, in the lead-up to the party’s 100th anniversary in July. In this piece, Josephine Ma looks into the relationship between the party and the military.
In 1927, chairman Mao Zedong famously said that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. This was the year the Chinese communists staged the Nanchang uprising against the ruling nationalist government.
It was the PLA that put the Communist Party in power when it won the Chinese Civil War in 1949. In the early years of its rule, all Communist Party leaders – from senior leaders such as Mao and Deng Xiaoping, to more junior figures such as Bo Yibo and Xi Zhongxun – had military experience.
As the founder, operator and leader of the army, the Communist Party has a closer relationship with the military than most political parties around the world.
