BEIJING, Sept 27 (AFP)
The People’s Liberation Army will flex its muscles to celebrate 50 years of communism, but China’s military has seen its vast web of political and economic patronage cut back dramatically.
In 1949 the Communist Party rode to power on the strength of its private army, the PLA, whose soldiers formed the core of a rag-tag band of communists seeking to unite China and end 100 years of foreign invasion.
The group led by peasant leader Mao Zedong became famous for both its guerrilla war tactics against the invading Japanese army in World War II and its near impossible defeat of the well-equipped, US-backed Nationalist army during the 1945-1949 civil war.
Western experts say the PLA’s greatest achievement was its stubborn defense of North Korea in a bloody war of attrition against US-led United Nations forces during the 1950-1953 Korean War.
That war has always been considered by the Chinese as a military victory against “American imperialism,” which together with heroic propaganda campaigns gave the PLA legendary status.
The PLA fought two other major wars during Communist China’s first 50 years — a victorious border war against India in 1962 and a brief but bloody battering at the hands of Vietnam in 1979.
China also engaged in several border skirmishes with the former Soviet Union that came dangerously close to all out war.
The PLA’s weaponry has evolved from captured US and Japanese equipment during World War II to sophisticated Russian-made fighter planes, nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles and advanced conventional weapons.
The military will take pride of place in the October 1 celebrations to mark 50 years of communist rule with a massive parade through the heart of Beijing.
The generals are expected to wheel out all their latest hardware, including the Dongfeng DF 31 inter-continental ballistic missile and a domestically-made fighter bomber the Flying Panther.
But despite the show of force, the PLA is facing tough times.
The military is under pressure to reduce manpower and get rid of its business empire. It is also increasingly subservient to the civilian leaders.
“Political power comes from the barrel of the gun,” said the Great Helmsman Mao.
“Our principle is that the party commands the gun and the gun shall never be allowed to command the party.”
This dictum never rang truer than in 1998, when the National People’s Congress passed a law stipulating PLA subservience to the party.
Chinese officials said the law was needed to codify the PLA’s relationship with the party and government as part of efforts to establish the rule of law in China.
Western diplomats, however, said the law was needed because there was a lack of professional soldiers in China’s top leadership.
Mao and paramount leader Deng Xiaoping were both first generation revolutionaries who easily moved between their roles as military and party leaders.
The highest position Deng ever held was chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). Present CMC chairman, President Jiang Zemin, is the first civilian to hold the post.
Jiang has no military background but under the late Deng’s tutorship he worked to nurture new generals, while dismissing and retiring older ones.
Before Deng died in early 1997, he made sure former president and CMC member Yang Shangkun was retired and that Yang’s half brother Yang Baibing was removed from the CMC in what was seen as an effort to avoid a coup.
In 1982 at the start of China’s reforms, nine of the 25 titular heads of the Communist Party’s Politburo were from the army.
Today only two out of 19 are military men, while the army’s representation on the inner circle Politburo Standing Committee hit zero for the first time with the retirement of General Liu Huaqing in 1997.
The PLA is currently planning to cut enlistment by 500,000 soldiers to 2.5 million, and is concentrating on developing the capability to “win local wars in high tech conditions.”
In further move to clip the military’s wings and stem rampant self-enrichment and corruption, in 1998 Jiang ordered army chiefs to dismantle their business empire.
More than 20,000 companies run by the army — ranging from transport and real estate to coal mines, hotels, restaurants and night clubs — were raising revenues believed to exceed the annual military budget of 9.7 billion dollars.
From the report of the driver of the motor-taxi it seems likely that the militia’s did not know that they killed a journalist. For them he was just another white man, someone belonging to the western intruders who mingled in their internal affairs. The situation on East Timor is dangerous for all white people, whether journalist or not. Sander Thoenes, who had been Indonesia-correspondent for the British paper Financial Times and the Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland for the last two years, fatally underestimated the dangers of being a white man in an explosive Timorese city. Or was it the panic of the driver, who turned his bike and raced away, that triggered the violence of the militia’s?
The exact details of the tragedy, the 22nd death of a journalist-on-duty this year, will probably never get known. The only thing that nobody doubts, is that the 30 years old Sander Thoenes was a highly promising journalist, praised by his employers for his reliable reporting, his intelligent analyses and his cautious way of acting in dangerous situations. His tragedy was that he worked in a place where even the slightest misreading of the circumstances could be lethal.
Antoine VERBIJ
AMSTERDAM, Sept 26
(Specially for THE GLOBE)
What really happened on last week’s Tuesday in one of the outskirts of Dili, remains vague. According to a Dutch journalist who arrived in Dili the same day as Sander Thoenes and was one of the last people to see him alive, Thoenes decided not tot stick with his colleagues but to go on his own to a part of town where the violence by the pro-Indonesia militia’s had been the most severe. He took a motor-taxi. The driver, who eventually survived, later told that they met a group of six armed militia’s on three motorbikes. The driver got frightened, turned his bike, told Sander to hold him tight, and fled on high speed, followed by the militia’s. He could not control the bike and fell, whereupon he ran away into the bushes. Sander Thoenes stayed behind, lying on the road unconscious. When the militia’s arrived, the driver heard them say: ‘Get him, shoot him.’
In their comments on the incident several Dutch papers reproached the UN-peace keeping force on East Timor for not giving enough protection to the journalists. It is however questionable whether such protection can be expected from an army that is still in the process of building up its forces and controls only a small part of the territory, as was the case with the Unifet-army on last week’s Tuesday, when Sander Thoenes was shot. On that day some hundred journalists arrived in Dili. To protect them would have been an enormous task, that would have prevented Unifet to do what they came for: to give the inhabitants that had fled the town of Dili a safe haven to return to.
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
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