Chinese Civil-Military Relations: The Divestiture of People's Liberation Army Business Holdings

In: Armed forces & society, Band 32, Heft 3, S. 437-453

Abstract

The promulgation of the Divestiture Act of 1998 that banned all the commercial activities of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) raises two questions: what does this development say about China's civil-military relations, and what explains the Chinese military's agreement to divest itself of its enterprises? This article contends that neither the symbiotic model nor Huntingtonian objective control explains the outcome. What has happened in China can be characterized as strategic subjective control, a mechanism that has two distinctive features. First, Chinese civil-military relations are unique in that the civilian leaders have promoted military professionalism by retaining the means of subjective civilian control. Second, the kind of subjective mechanism at work in China has evolved from charismatic to institutional subjective control. Both the initial development of the commercial activities of the PLA and the divestiture are best explained in terms of the grand-national strategy and economic reform.