What and Why of the PLA Promotions: Who got promoted, which positions are due, WTC problem: India or anti-corruption; Hypersonic Missiles; ACE, Bhutan

The Takshashila PLA Insight

Issue No 111.
September 13, 2021

I. The Big Story: What and Why of the PLA Promotions

President Xi Jinping promoted five military officers to the rank of General on September 6, 2021. Earlier in July, he had promoted four officers as Generals.

After the latest round of promotions, Wang Haijiang will command the Western Theatre Command, Lin Xiangyang will command the Central Theatre Command, Dong Jun will command the PLA Navy, Chang Dingqiu will command the PLA Air Force and Xu Xueqiang will head the National Defense University.

Wang Haijiang replaces Xu Qiling, who was promoted as a General and appointed as the WTC Commander in July 2021. Xu was only 59 years old, six years less than the current retirement age for the Generals in the PLA. Dong Jun replaces Shen Jinlong as the Commander of the PLA Navy. Shen is the senior-most of all outgoing Generals as he will be 65 next month. Chang Dingqiu replaced Ding Laihang as the Commander of the PLA AF. Ding was 64 years old. Similarly, Lin Xiangyang and Xu Xueqiang replace Yi Xiaoguang (CTC) and Zheng He (NDU). Yi was only 63 years old.

Meanwhile, only Gen Zheng He attended the recent promotions ceremony among all the reshuffled/outgoing officers. It is rumoured that he might be appointed as the NDU Commissar. The age profiles of the outgoing commanders indicate that most of them were below the retirement age. However, the new appointees are younger.

Profiles of the new appointees:

Wang Haijiang, the Commander of WTC, is a native of Sichuan. He commanded the PLA’s 61^st Division and was also the deputy commander of the South Xinjiang Military Region. In 2016, he was appointed as the Deputy Commander of the Tibet Military Region. He was also the Commander of the Tibet and Xinjiang military districts. He was promoted to the rank of Lt Gen in December 2019. Wang is only 58 years old.

Dong Jun, the Commander of the PLA Navy, has served as the director of the Military Training Department of the Naval Command, deputy chief of staff of the North Sea Fleet, deputy commander of the East China Sea Fleet, deputy chief of staff of the Navy, and Deputy Commander of the Southern Theatre Command. I couldn’t find Dong’s age.

Chang Dingqiu, the Commander of the PLA AF, is the youngest full General in the PLA. He is only 54 years old. He was born in 1967 in Hengyang, Hunan province and enlisted in the army in 1984. He commanded an (unknown) flight regiment of the Air Force Aviation, was the deputy commander and division commander of the 3rd Division of the Air Force Fighter Aviation, assistant to the chief of staff of the Air Force and the chief of staff of the Air Force of the Shenyang Military Region. He was also the deputy commander of the Southern Theatre Command and deputy chief of staff of the CMC’s Joint Staff. He is also an alternate member of the CCP’s 19th Central Committee.

Lin Xiangyang, the Commander of the Central Theatre Command, is a native of Fuqing, Fujian province. The 57-year-old served as the 31st Army’s deputy commander, 47th Army commander, 82nd Army commander, 72nd Army commander, and the commander of the Eastern Theatre Army. He will now Command the Central Theatre Command.

Xu Xueqiang, the head of the National Defense University, served as the commander of an (unknown) Air Force aviation regiment and the Shanghai Air Force Command Post commander. The 59-year-old was also the former chief of staff of the Nanjing Military Region Air Force, the deputy commander, and later the commander of theatre Air Force of the Northern Theatre Command. In 2010, he was awarded the title of "Excellent Commander of the Army."

What’s happening in the Western Theatre Command?

The appointment of Wang Haijiang is the second change in two months and fourth in the last 12 months in the leadership of the Western Theatre Command. Zhao Zongqi was appointed as the WTC commander in early 2016 after the military reforms, and he remained commander until his retirement in December 2020. Zhang Xudong, the former deputy commander of the Central Theatre, was appointed as the WTC commander in December 2020. However, Zhang only stayed in office for six months and was replaced by Xu Qiling in July 2021. Now, two months later, Wang Haijiang replaced Xu Qiling as the new commander of the Western Theatre Command. Both Zhang Xudong and Xu Qiling were born in 1962 - at least five to six years from their retirement age. Their current appointments are unknown.

These changes could be related to the ongoing stand-off with India, where the leadership may not be happy with what’s happening on the Sino-Indian border. Moreover, as Wang’s profile highlights, he has served in South Xinjiang Military District, the current focal point for China-India stand-offs, and commanded both Tibet and Xinjiang Military Commands – both share a border with India. This could have been a reason for the recent change.

However, it could also be related to Xi’s political purges under his anti-corruption campaign in the region. The Chengdu and Lanzhou Military Regions, which together form China’s Western Theatre Command, are the worst-hit areas by Xi’s anti-corruption drive. The former Chengdu Military Region has the largest number of military officers (both tigers and flies) under investigation.

More interestingly, after the recent rounds of promotion, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and other six departments jointly issued a “bribery blacklist”, focusing on investigating and punishing five types of bribery. Among them, the obstruction of vested interest groups and the pressure of resistance to counterattack was a major highlight. So the changes in the WTC could perhaps be related to eliminating Guo Boxiong, Xu Caihou, Fang Fenghui, and Zhang Yang’s influence from the region, especially from Tibet and Chongqing commands. This could only be verified if more information is available on the changes at lower levels in the WTC.

Moving on, since coming to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has held 13 ceremonies for promoting 66 Lt Generals to Generals (plus-minus 6). In the past two months, Xi has changed the commanders of the PLA Army, Navy, Air Force, Strategic Support Force, and the commanders of the Western, Central and Southern Theatre Commands. Going ahead, the commanders of the PLA RF, JLSF, Northern and Eastern Theatre could change.

If age is the driver, then we should expect changes to the position of the PLA AF political commissar, the PLA RF Commander and the Head of Equipment Development of the Military Commission. That’s because Yu Zhongfu, the PLA AF political commissar, is already 65. Zhou Yaning, the PLA RF Commander, will be 64 soon, and Li Shangfu, Head of Equipment Development of the Military Commission, is 64.

These are besides the changes that are likely to happen to the CMC as we head towards the 20^th Party Congress.

II. Research Papers

China’s Hypersonic Missiles

The PLA is pursuing various hypersonic delivery systems to augment its already impressive arsenal of precision strike capabilities. Its new hypersonic delivery vehicles, which could be armed with either conventional or nuclear munitions, could better attack many time-sensitive, mobile, or high-value targets compared with non-hypersonic missiles as well as crewed or uncrewed planes. Such capabilities would impact the existing security balance in the Indo-Pacific and potentially contribute to escalating regional tensions. The PLA is reportedly searching for two basic types of hypersonic missiles, categorised based on their means of propulsion. The first group, hypersonic cruise missiles (HCM), rely on a powered flight with air-breathing engines. The second group, hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV), are launched into the upper atmosphere (50-80 kilometres, or 30-50 miles) and then glide unpowered toward a target. Both types can reach distant targets more rapidly than China’s existing subsonic or supersonic cruise missiles and warplanes. And although China’s ballistic missiles can fly as fast as these hypersonic systems, HCMs and HGVs have more unpredictable manoeuvrability, allowing for better circumvention of some aspects of present-day US Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems.

The first public demonstration came on the 2019 National Day Parade when the PLA paraded several DF-17s, solid-fueled MRBMs, also designed to launch the DF-ZF (WU-14) HGVs. State media, in the past, have discussed the deployment of HGVs on longer-range ballistic missiles enabling them to reach the mainland US. The state media have also highlighted that HGV technologies have become “an integral part of China’s nuclear strategy.” China is also working on the application of hypersonic technologies for aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, etc.

China-Bhutan Territorial Disputes

At the 10th Expert Group Meeting on the Bhutan-China Boundary Issue, held from April 6 to 9 in 2021 in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China and Bhutan agreed to hold the 25th round of boundary talks at a “mutually convenient time as soon as possible.” Before this, the last round of negotiations was held in April 2016, and the next round was apparently put off first due to the Doklam crisis in 2017 and then delayed because of Bhutan’s general elections and a change in government following year.

Apart from India, Bhutan is the only country with which China has an unsettled land border. It is very likely that China will raise its new territorial claims [at the upcoming border talks] as a pressure tactic.

China has recently expanded its territorial claims beyond the disputed regions in northern and western Bhutan. In June 2020, at a virtual meeting of the US-based environmental finance group Global Environment Facility (GEF), a Chinese delegate opposed Bhutan’s application to fund a project in the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, located in Bhutan’s eastern district of Trashigang. The Chinese delegate claimed that the sanctuary lay in “the China-Bhutan disputed areas” that was on “the agenda of [the] China-Bhutan boundary talk[s].” Following this, the Chinese MFA issued a statement to the Hindustan Times, saying that “disputes over the eastern, central and western sectors” of the China-Bhutan border had existed “for a long time.” In addition to expanding its territorial claims, China has also worked to unilaterally change the status quo on the ground through an array of measures, ranging from sending Tibetan grazers and military patrolling teams into disputed areas to building roads and even military structures in the contested territory with Bhutan. The most recent being building Xiaogang villages on the Bhutan-China border to affirm its sovereignty over the region. This mirrors China’s strategy in its other territorial disputes with India and the South China Sea.

Image Source: StratNews Global

PLA’s Critical Assessment of Agile Combat Employment Concept

From April to May 2021, the US Air Force conducted a second exercise to test the Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept and also committed to training units to implement ACE. This is the method by which the USAF intends to counteract the Russian and Chinese capabilities to strike its airbases and, ultimately, deny the USAF access to theatres of operations along their peripheries. These are generally referred to as “anti-access and area denial” capabilities. In combination with similar efforts by other US military services, ACE aims to improve America’s military advantage and deterrence capabilities. The PLA regularly studies the American ACE to perceive exploitable weaknesses in it.

According to the PLA’s assessment, in case of an escalation of a conflict over Taiwan, the PLA has to only strike three out of six American airbases in the region. These are Misawa, Yokota and Kadena air bases in Japan. Their assessment highlights that it is unlikely that the Republic of Korea will allow the US aircraft to operate Osan and Kunsan air bases to engage in hostilities with China, and Guam’s Anderson airbase is more than 1700 km away – also within PRC’s ballistic and cruise missiles ranges. ACE is an attempt to resolve this predicament principally through dispersed deployment. It involves a network of airfields arranged in “clusters” in which major bases, such as the six bases above, will function as hubs, a combination of smaller military airfields, civilian airports, and even temporary ones airstrips will function as spokes.

But select PLA authors highlight three significant weaknesses within the American ACE: First, the regional countries might not permit the USAF to use their airfields for military operations due to the risk of consequent counterstrikes, writing, “It is uncertain whether even so-called ‘reliable’ allies [almost certainly a reference to Japan] will consent or not to American military aircraft taking off from within their borders to go attack a third country with which they are not in direct conflict.” Second, they argue that ACE will not reduce the USAF’s reliance on permanent bases. Because both the number of fighters and sorties that an RBCP kit can sustain and the length of time that it can do so is “limited,” units at small, temporary bases will ultimately rely on support from large, permanent bases that will retain a “nodal function,” and that “once an adversary paralyses those large bases, then the effect of small, temporary bases will be greatly reduced.” Finally, they suggest that an adversary could counteract ACE by shortening the time necessary to complete its kill chain: “If an adversary forward-deploys its maritime and aerial reconnaissance and strike platforms, […], then the adversary can grasp the brief window [of opportunity] during which American aircraft have landed at small, frontline airfields to conduct precision strikes.” Read More

Also, read Ramping the Strait: Quick and Dirty Solutions to Amphibious Lift

III. Developing Stories

Taiwan and China

The frequent aggressive sorties by PLA aircraft into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone have prompted a proposed increase of nearly 10 per cent in the island’s air force maintenance budget. According to Taiwan’s defence ministry’s budget proposal sent to the legislature for review, the air force had listed NT$29.2 billion (US$1 billion) for maintenance and operational facility procurements for its aircraft for the financial year 2022, up 9.8 per cent from this year, and a 56 per cent rise since 2016 when Tsai Ing-wen was first elected president. The sharp increases over the years have been mainly due to the growing tensions between Taipei and Beijing, which has escalated the number of warplanes approaching the self-ruled island – especially in the past two years – as it flexes its muscles across the Taiwan Strait. The PLA has so far carried out some 435 sorties since January 2021 into Taiwan’s ADIZ, mostly in the southwest, according to the island’s defence ministry – up from 380 in the whole of last year.

Meanwhile, the former US Pacific Command chief Harry Harris has called Washington to reassess its long-standing policy of keeping its commitment to Taiwan’s defence ambiguous. “We should reconsider this, our long-standing policy of strategic ambiguity. If at the end of that ... reassessment, we keep the same policy, that’s fine. But we shouldn’t keep it simply because we’ve done it that way since the late 1970s,” said Harris. The strategic ambiguity policy was adopted after US-Taiwan relations became “unofficial” in 1979, with Washington switching its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

Do read Collin Fox’s piece for CIMEC on Arming Taiwan with Sea Denial capabilities. He claims that Taiwan has not received significant military, foreign assistance since the United States shifted recognition to Beijing in 1979 and so has a long history of buying American military hardware with its own funds. This cash-and-carry arrangement has allowed it to choose prestige platforms like M-1 tanks and F-16 fighters that better support anachronistic fantasies of retaking the mainland than a realistic defence of the island. On the other hand, security assistance and security cooperation funds come with focused caveats seeking to build specific mutual-import capabilities.

Going ahead, he argues that the policymakers should heavily reinforce Taiwan through focused security subsidies (which allows them to buy denial technologies) while maintaining a policy of strategic ambiguity would maintain conventional deterrence through denial against China. This approach would also greatly reduce the risk of a fait accompli, thereby giving American political leadership time to discover the best outcome for its strategic ambiguity: to rally support at home and abroad, to pressure China through a variety of means, and to enter combat at a time, place, and manner of its own choosing – or even to forego the conflict entirely.

Meanwhile, Taiwan commissioned a new Tuo Chiang-class stealth multi-mission corvette last week. It also plans to deploy the second-generation Teng-Yun UAVs in the upcoming Hang Kuang annual defence exercises.

The South China Sea

Tensions were high as the USS Benfold conducted FONOP within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, Spratly Islands. This is the US' first FONOP since China passed the regulation in the first week of September, requiring foreign vessels' notification before entering the territorial waters. Like other laws, China kept the term territorial waters ambiguous and undefined.

China's Southern Theatre Command's spokesperson, Air Force Senior Colonel Tian Junli, pointed out that the US move seriously violated China's sovereignty and security. "It was the latest ironclad proof of US' navigation hegemony and militarisation of the South China Sea. More and more facts have proved that the US is the biggest risk maker and the biggest breaker of stability and peace in the region," said Tian. China also reacted to the US FONOP by ramping up its presence and conducting amphibious landing exercises in the South China Sea.

Also, read this piece by Lan Anh Nguyen Dang on the implications of China’s 2020 and 2021 domestic laws in the South China Sea.

IV. News Update

- Nearly 200 PLA senior commanders from all five theatre commands, Tibet and Xinjiang Military Districts, gathered for annual exercises at Zhurihe Base, Inner Mongolia, last week. Before this, such a huge gathering was held in 2018, when commanders gathered in the Xinjiang Korla training base. This week’s exercise added an intensive session to rectify deficiencies exposed in confrontational drills more than a month ago with the “blue army” – which simulates an “opposing force” adopting a command system and tactics similar to those used by the US and Nato – with senior PLA commanders inspecting the outcome. The PLA’s “blue army”, set up in 2012, conducts regular confrontational drills with the “red army” – drawn from around the country – to simulate battle conditions. Tang Fei, the director of the Training Bureau of the Army Staff, said changes had to be made to previous training modules to strengthen problem-solving capabilities. “[This time] the troops completed the rectification at the base after finding the problems, and then carried out inspection and assessment … improving further through further combat,” he said.

- China's first professional test base for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has been put into service in Jingbian County, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, filling a gap in the country's UAV industry chain. The test base is expected to be built into a national UAV industry comprehensive demonstration area and public service platform. The construction of this base, also known as the Jingbian general aviation airport, started in 2015. As China's first airport featuring UAV testing, it covers an area of 5,063 mu and boasts 5,000 square km of testing airspace and a runway of 2,400 meters long and 45 meters wide. The airport has passed the examination of the aviation authority and obtained an airport use license. It is currently in full operation.

- China successfully launched a new direct broadcast satellite (DBS) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest China’s Sichuan Province last week. The satellite, Zhongxing-9B, was launched by a Long March-3B carrier rocket. It is equipped with specially designed transponders that can support the transmission of 4K and 8K high-definition video programs and provide high-quality live broadcast transmission services for major events such as the upcoming Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. Furthermore, this launch marked the 388th mission for the Long March series carrier rockets.

- More readings: China denies that it’s taking over an Afghan military site which is a US military base; New video showing troops, jets, artillery in Tibet; India to build six airborne early-warning and control aircraft.