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The Dragon Extends Its Reach: Chinese Military Power Goes Global. LARRY M. WORTZEL . Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2013. xv + 240 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978-1-61234-405-8 - Volume 217 - Paul H.B. Godwin

In the late spring of 1985, shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the former USSR, the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party (CMC) directed a radical change in the armed forces′ training and preparation for war. The Chinese People′s Liberation Army (PLA-as all the military services and branches are collectively designated) was instructed that it was no longer necessary to prepare for an "early, major and nuclear war" with the Soviet Union. Henceforth, the PLA′s doctrine, strategy and operational concepts would be focused on preparing for the most probable form of future conflict: local, limited war (jubu zhanzheng) around China′s periphery.1 The decade following the CMC′s directive has seen the Chinese armed forces begin the transition towards a more modern, flexible military force as they′changed their organizational structure, command and control, and training to focus on possibly unexpected, potentially intensive military conflict along China′s borders and maritime territories. These changes paralleled the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which eliminated any significant military threat to China′s northern borders for at least another decade. Nevertheless, and even as Beijing′s security analysts were publicly acknowledging that China′s military security was more assured than it had been for the past 50 years, the defence expenditures of the People′s Republic entered a period of rapid growth that continues to this day.

In the late spring of 1985, shortly after M. Gorbachev came to power in the former USSR, the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party directed a radical change in the armed forces' training and preparation for war. The author examines the past decade of change in Beijing's defence policies and the accompanying transformation in the PLA's (People's Libertaion Army's) military doctrine, strategy, and concepts of operation, and assesses China's military capabilities relative to its defence policies. (DÜI-Sen)

In 1985, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), as all three armed services are collectively known, was required to redirect its military strategy from a focus on general war with the USSR to the more probable source of military conflict: small-scale and potentially intense wars around China's periphery. New enemies did not emerge; instead, the kinds of conflicts that could arise required a revised defense policy and military strategy. These changes, although important in themselves, left the PLA even more conscious of its technological obsolescence. Developing concepts of military operations in which speed and lethality were to be the principal characteristics of combat, rather than defensive operations based upon attrition warfare and a society mobilized for war, served only to highlight the PLA's technological weaknesses. As in all the years since the beginning of Chinese defense modernization in the late 1970s, these technological weaknesses led the armed forces to demand swifter modernization of their arms and equipment.