China has experienced unprecedented economic, political, and social changes during the past twenty-five years, and in 2002–2003 just witnessed a sweeping turnover of political and military elites. Civil-military relations in China are undergoing a major transfor-mation, but experts tend to disagree on what the most important trend is. This article contends that the most significant transformation underway in Chinese civil-military relations is statification or nationalization—what the Chinese call guojiahua. The People’s Liberation Army is being transformed from a party army into a party-state army. Other trends include continued, weakly institutionalized civilian control of the armed forces; civil-military relations no longer being merely about party-army relations; and military professionalization without depoliticization. While the process of creeping guojiahua is likely to be rocky in the near-to-mid terms, the trend augurs well for long-term political change in China, particularly the prospects for successful democratization.
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I am paraphrasing Richard J. Latham, “China’s Party-Army Relations After June 1989: A Case for Miles’ Law?” in Richard H. Yang, Peter Kien-hong Yu, and Andrew N. Yang (eds.), China’s Military: The PLA in 1990/1991 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 112–112.
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