China’s other transition: Military to be led by new generation

Antagonism toward U.S.

Some outside analysts are concerned that the younger officers may be eager to prove their mettle.

Graphic

Nerves over China’s military spending

Keith Richburg

The growing spending, worrisome to neighbors, is allowing PLA to embark on sweeping modernization program.

“There’s real antagonism toward the U.S.,” said Dean Cheng, an analyst of China’s military with the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “The scary thing is, as you have this group of officers who think the U.S. is out to get them, they’ve also seen their military improve.”

Cheng added: “We are potentially looking at a military that is more self-confident, arguably more arrogant, and being pushed by a political leadership somewhat eager to show how much it has improved. . . . All you need is somebody doing something stupid.”

Others agreed that the real problem might come from something unintended, not calculated. For example, with more maritime forces operating in the South China and East China seas, Blasko said, “I am increasingly worried about something happening that leads to greater escalation.”

As important as the new commanders’ world outlook is their view on the need for reform of China’s hidebound Leninist political system. While much of their thinking remains a mystery, a few have given occasional hints of their beliefs.

Liu Yuan, a princeling son of Mao-era leader Liu Shaoqi, warned in a speech in January that corruption had become so deeply entrenched that it threatened the party and the military.

“I’d rather risk losing my position than refrain from fighting corruption to the end,” he told several hundred assembled officers. In a preface he wrote in 2010 to a book by a scholar friend, Liu accused past and current Chinese leaders of “betrayal” and urged China to embrace a form of “new democracy.”

Gen. Liu Yazhou, political commissar of the National Defense University and considered a princeling because of his famous father-in-law, Li Xiannian, raised eyebrows with a provocative 2010 essay in a Hong Kong magazine in which he seemed to advocate more democracy.

“If a system fails to let its citizens breathe freely and release their creativity to the maximum extent . . . it is certain to perish,” Liu wrote.

Those words might in another context be considered seditious. But Liu in the summer was promoted to full general — by Hu Jintao, who had been elevating his loyalists to the commission.