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Lesson 13 min 20 XP

The PLA and Party-Military Relations

How the Chinese Communist Party maintains control over the world's largest military, why the PLA is a party army rather than a national army, and what this means for civil-military relations.

The Party Commands the Gun

Mao Zedong's dictum that 'the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party' remains the foundational principle of Chinese civil-military relations. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is not China's national army in the Western sense. It is the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party. PLA officers swear loyalty to the Party, not to the state or the constitution. The Party's Central Military Commission (CMC), chaired by the paramount leader, exercises supreme command over all armed forces.

This structure means there is no institutional separation between political and military authority. The CMC chairman is typically the General Secretary of the CCP and the President of the PRC, concentrating all three titles in one person. Xi Jinping assumed the CMC chairmanship in 2012, before formally becoming president in 2013, underscoring that military command is considered more important than the state presidency.