Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century
10. Strengthening national defense and the armed forces
Since the launch of reform and opening up, China has made constant progress in building a more revolutionary, modernized, and standardized military and enhancing its national defense capabilities. This has provided reliable security guarantees for China's reform, development, and stability. The Central Committee has stressed that a country needs a strong military before it can truly be strong and secure. China must build fortified national defense and a strong people's military commensurate with its international standing and its security and development interests.
The Party has set objectives for strengthening the military and defined China's military strategy for the new era. It has formulated the following three-step development strategy for modernizing national defense and the armed forces:
・ achieving the centenary objectives of the People's Liberation Army by 2027;
・ basically completing the modernization of national defense and the armed forces by 2035; and
・ fully transforming the armed forces into world-class forces by the mid-21st century.
The Party has worked to enhance the political loyalty of the armed forces, strengthen them through reform, science and technology, and training of competent personnel, and run them in accordance with the law. It has accelerated efforts to modernize military theory, organization, personnel, and weaponry and equipment and to integrate mechanization with the application of information and smart technologies within the military. Troop training and battle preparedness have been bolstered across the board. Through these efforts, China has adhered to its own path in building a strong military.
To build strong people's armed forces, it is of paramount importance to uphold the fundamental principle and system of absolute Party leadership over the military, to ensure that supreme leadership and command authority rest with the Party Central Committee and the Central Military Commission (CMC), and to fully enforce the system of the CMC chairman assuming overall responsibility.
For a period of time, the Party's leadership over the military was obviously lacking. If this problem had not been completely solved, it would not only have diminished the military's combat capacity, but also undermined the key political principle that the Party commands the gun. Setting their sights on this problem, the Central Committee and the CMC have worked vigorously to govern the military with strict discipline in every respect and made resolute decisions to enforce political discipline within the military. At the conference on military political work in 2014 in Gutian, Fujian Province, a plan was unveiled for enhancing the political loyalty of the armed forces in the new era, restoring and carrying on the proud traditions and fine conduct of the Party and the military, and improving political work through rectification. An all-around push was made to strengthen the Party's leadership and Party building, improve Party conduct, build integrity, and fight corruption in the military. Grave violations of Party discipline and state laws including those involving Guo Boxiong, Xu Caihou, Fang Fenghui, and Zhang Yang were thoroughly investigated and punished, and their negative influence was completely eliminated. With this, the political environment in the people's armed forces has made a fundamental turn for the better.
The Party has set forth the strategy of strengthening the armed forces through reform, and led efforts to conduct the most extensive and profound reform of national defense and the armed forces since the founding of the People's Republic. It has reshaped the leadership and command system of the military, its system of modern military forces, and its system of military policies. The number of active service personnel has been cut by 300,000. A new military structure has been established with the CMC exercising overall leadership, the theater commands responsible for military operations, and the services focusing on developing capabilities.
In response to the new global military revolution, we have implemented the strategy of strengthening the armed forces through science and technology. We have made our people's military more innovative, established a robust modern logistics system, and achieved major progress in developing weapons and equipment and national defense-related science and technology.
We have implemented the strategy of strengthening the armed forces by training competent personnel, established military education policies for the new era, and specified a set of criteria for good military officers. We have worked to develop a new type of military personnel training system consisting of military academies, military training, and military vocational education to train revolutionary officers and soldiers in the new era with faith, ability, courage, and integrity, and to build highly capable forces with ironclad convictions, beliefs, discipline, and sense of duty.
We have implemented the strategy of running the armed forces in accordance with the law, built a Chinese system for law-based administration of military affairs, and expedited fundamental transformations in the way our military is run. We have advanced the development of the military honors system.
The Party has set the missions and tasks for the armed forces in the new era. It has created new methods for providing military strategic guidance, improved the military strategic layout, and strengthened the armed forces' strategic functions in shaping our military posture, managing crises, and deterring and winning wars. Devoting intense focus to combat effectiveness as the sole criterion that matters most and to their fundamental purpose of being able to fight and win, the people's armed forces have strengthened their strategic forces and new-domain forces with new combat capabilities, and they have improved command systems and capacity for joint operations. They have worked hard to address "peacetime ills," vigorously strengthened training under combat conditions, and built strong, well-structured, and modern border defense, coastal defense, and air defense systems. The armed forces have remained committed to carrying out military struggles in a flexible manner to counter military provocations by external forces, and they have created a strong deterrent against separatist activities seeking "Taiwan independence." They have conducted major operations related to border defense, protecting China's maritime rights, countering terrorism and maintaining stability, disaster rescue and relief, fighting Covid-19, peacekeeping and escort services, humanitarian assistance, and international military cooperation.
Since the Party's 18th National Congress, the people's military has been through an all-around revolutionary restructuring under the firm leadership of the Party in preparation for the next stage, while our defense capabilities have grown in step with our economic strength. Integration of national strategic systems and capabilities has accelerated, sound administrative and support systems for ex-service members have been established, defense mobilization has become more efficient, and greater unity has been cultivated between the military and the government and between the military and civilians. Firmly carrying out the missions of the new era, the people's military has taken concrete actions to safeguard our national sovereignty, security, and development interests with an indomitable fighting spirit.
