China entered the nuclear and space age as a result of a crusade that began almost as soon as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had completed the conquest of the mainland. In this article we will comment on some aspects of the entire nuclear programme over the past 30 years as it has affected the strategic role of the PLA.1

The 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) finds it in the throes of a dramatic reform process that has discarded the principles and practices advocated by its founder. Necessitated by the sorry state of the PLA at the end of the Maoist period and facilitated by the sweeping political changes that have occurred since then, this process seeks to convert the Chinese army into a modern and professional force. Although large-scale weapons updating has been ruled out for economic and technological reasons, nevertheless considerable progress has been made, while in other areas the changes have been fundamental and far-reaching.

Introduction Since the late 1970s, when the current programmes seeking to modernize China's defence establishment began, issues of military doctrine, strategy and operations have remained at the forefront of China's quest for a defence capacity capable of being ranked among the world's great powers. As the Chinese leadership contemplated defence modernization, they could not but recognize the Janus-like quality of their armed forces. One face looked back on the people's war traditions that served them so well and for so long, while the other faced the complexities of conventional and strategic nuclear warfare and deterrence in the latter part of the 20th century.

In October 1983 the secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hu Yaobang, formally announced the beginning of a two-stage, three-year Party rectification. The first stage, from November 1983 to around December 1984, would concentrate on the rectification of Party committees (dangwei) and leading offices at the Centre and in the provinces, major municipalities and autonomous regions. The second stage, from early 1985 to the end of 1986, would focus on rectification of Party organizations below provincial level. In fact, however, rectification was not officially ended until May 1987.

Enterprise Party–management relations lie at the intersection of two major reform efforts in present-day China–one aimed at decentralizing economic power through the “invigoration” of large and medium-scale industries, the other aimed at deconcentrating political power through the separation of Party from administration. Common to both reform efforts and critical to each is the area of Party–management relations. As an important issue in enterprise reform, on the one hand, it is central to the Chinese leadership's current drive to restructure the urban economy and, indeed, the entire national economy.1 On the other hand, as a crucial test of the leadership's ability to render the Communist Party more authoritative but less intrusive in day-to-day affairs, it is also central to current political reforms. While it might be too much to claim that the issue of Party–management relations is the key link in the leadership's overall modernization drive, unquestionably the failure to resolve the issue will seriously cripple its economic and political reform efforts.