CCP’s Official Military Newspaper Calls for War Preparation
Udumbara
.
The Chinese communist regime’s official military newspaper published a commentary during the “National Day” holiday week, urging the military to maintain a state of combat readiness at all times.
The call for combat readiness came amid the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ongoing purge of its top generals and the regime’s lingering threat of taking Taiwan by force.
Analysts have expressed doubts over the CCP military’s actual combat abilities, as well as the purpose and timing of the call.
On Oct. 6, the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, an important traditional Chinese event that fell in the same week as the “National Day,” the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army Daily published a short commentary on its front page.
It said that the security situation of communist China is “increasingly unstable and uncertain,” which calls for a constant state of military preparedness, and that PLA officers and soldiers should make sure they are “always ready for combat” and “able to fight at any time.”
The purge and the vacant top positions signify the loss of the central command for organizational and political leadership within the CCP’s military, according to observers.
The CCP announced recently that its top political meeting, the Fourth Plenary Session of the CCP Central Committee, will be held in Beijing from Oct. 20 to 23, and is expected to decide who will fill the vacant top military positions. The decisions will also reveal which faction is in control of the CCP and its military.
The CCP’s high-level military command system “is currently semi-paralyzed, meaning it’s not truly functioning,” said the host of the popular Chinese-language military talk show “Mark Space” on NTDTV.com, a sister media of The Epoch Times. Mark does not give his full name due to safety concerns.
If the details of this turmoil in the upper echelon were to spread to the middle and lower ranks, “it would lead to instability throughout the CCP’s military, potentially creating a situation the CCP could not predict or control,” Mark told The Epoch Times on Oct. 9.
To mask the turmoil, the CCP has intensified political study and training, “keeping the entire military busy,” he said. “In particular, it keeps the middle and lower ranks busy with combat readiness and training, leaving them with little time to focus on political matters. This also serves as a means of personnel control,” Mark said of the PLA Daily article’s call for combat readiness.
The CCP’s emphasis on “war preparation” is to pressure its opponents and achieve political goals, Chung Chih-tung, associate research fellow at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times on Oct. 9.
“Beijing is actively preparing for a U.S.-China military conflict,” he said, noting that “the PLA Daily’s commentary specifically mentioned the so-called instability and uncertainty in China’s security situation. This is their assessment of the overall situation.”
.
In the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, “the Trump administration is actively demonstrating its strong stance of maintaining peace through strength,” Chung explained. “Therefore, if China doesn’t want to be seen as a paper tiger, it must be prepared for a tough fight and be ready for military conflict with the United States at any time.”
Questionable Combat Ability
As to the CCP’s current combat ability, especially its ability to invade Taiwan, the analysts remain skeptical.The corruption in the Chinese Communist Party’s military is “far beyond imagination,” Mark pointed out. “The buying and selling of official positions throughout the entire system has actually led to a significant decline in the combat effectiveness of the CCP’s military.”
“Those who truly want to fight and are willing to give their lives to fight are probably rare. Most people in the military actually treat it as a business to make money and become rich,” he said.
As for invading Taiwan, the PLA has been without actual combat experience since its war with Vietnam in 1979, and lacks practical experience in large-scale landing operations, Chung pointed out. “A large-scale, cross-sea invasion of Taiwan would require a highly complex, combined amphibious operation involving land, sea, and air, and would therefore pose a significant challenge to the PLA,” he said.
Its internal corruption and paralyzed command system also make observers skeptical of its war-fighting ability, Chung said.
.
Final Showdown
Both Mark and Chung note that the CCP’s ruling philosophy is “all political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”—he who controls the military, controls the regime. The upcoming CCP Fourth Plenary Session will be a final showdown between different factions, as it will decide which faction will grab the vacant top military seats, they anticipated.Those top positions are currently vacant “due to disagreements within the party, possibly stemming from infighting,” Mark said. “If Xi Jinping’s associates fill the currently vacant positions, it means he has control over military power and the regime. And then, he will try to use force to ‘unify Taiwan.’”
Chung said the key is to see what happens to Zhang Youxia during the the Fourth Plenary Session “because Zhang Youxia is the only person in the military who can threaten Xi Jinping’s power.”
