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By Dan Martin
BEIJING: After five years in power, President Hu Jintao has finally
gained unquestioned control of China’s massive military while
transforming it into a wealthy, high-tech fighting force, analysts
said.
Although Hu was
named Communist Party chief in 2002 and president in 2003, he did
not inherit the mantle of commander-in-chief until a year later and
questions had lingered over who commanded the allegiance of the
country’s rapidly modernizing, 2.3-million-strong People’s
Liberation Army.
But key military
appointments by Hu in the run-up to the five-yearly Communist Party
Congress that is due to end Sunday in Beijing should help dispel any
questions, experts said.
They include a new
general chief of staff, the PLA’s highest uniformed position, and
new commanders of its naval and air forces.
“It looks like he
has full control over personnel now. He has continued to raise the
military budget and will continue that. He’s well established in
power now,” said Arthur Ding, a Chinese military expert at
Singapore’s Nanyang Technology University. Hu’s military
priorities were shown in the selection of General Chen Bingde as
general chief of staff, observers said.
Chen previously
directed the unit that controlled the country’s fast-developing
space program, and was a top commander of eastern China forces
viewed as crucial to a potential conflict with Taiwan.
“[Chen’s
selection] was a tough signal to Taiwan and it emphasizes the
military’s modernization in the high-tech era,” said Cheng Li, a
scholar with the US Brookings Institution.
Hu’s predecessor,
Jiang Zemin, upped spending to lift the PLA from a backward, bloated
force to a modern military, and Hu has taken the baton with gusto.
The armed forces
received 45 billion dollars in funding this year, an annual 17.8
percent increase and Hu has promised more in future years.
The spending has
opened new high-tech vistas for the former peasant force.
Last year it
unveiled an advanced new homegrown fighter and in January made China
only the third country to successfully test a satellite-killer
missile, among other new high-tech toys.
“China’s
technology level is still below that of the United States and
Europe, but they are making steady progress,” said Kevin Pollpeter,
a China military expert at the US-based Centre for Intelligence
Research and Analysis.
Questions over Hu’s
command of the military stemmed from his failure to take the mantle
of CMC chairman upon becoming president in 2003.
Jiang surrendered
that post a year later, but his appointees remained in top posts.
Experts say there
was little risk of the military not obeying Hu up to now.
The PLA once
occupied a central political role and wielded huge economic muscle
through a massive, and now-disbanded, business empire.
But although the PLA
was born of the Communist Party, it is apolitical now, Pollpeter
said.
“The PLA is
increasingly satisfied to remain a professional military that does
not get involved in domestic politics. They realize they have a lot
of work to do to make themselves into a modern force and getting
into politics only distracts from that,” he said.
Still, concern over
PLA allegiance remains valid, especially as unrest grows in China
over widening wealth disparity, corruption and other ills, said a
Western military attaché in Beijing.
He pointed out that
similar issues gave rise to the 1989 Tiananmen Square
demonstrations, which the PLA violently suppressed.
“What if there is
another Tiananmen? Or China gets embroiled in a military conflict?
Anything can happen and the PLA could move back to something like
its former prominence,” the attaché said.
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