China's PLA to Troops: Prepare for War

As tensions between China and Japan escalate, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been told to prepare for war in a training directive issued by the General Staff Headquarters, which oversees the entire PLA.

“The PLA and the Chinese People’s Armed Police Force (APF) should focus closely on the objective of being able to fight and winning battle, vigorously strengthen real-combat-like military training, practice and innovate the training mode under information-based conditions and intensify efforts to cultivate new-type and high-caliber military personnel,” according to a reference to the directive on the English version of the People’s Liberation Army Daily, the official newspaper of the PLA. The directive was issued in Chinese and is entitled “Instructions on the PLA’s Military Training in 2013.”

Past directives have largely focused on coordination among the various PLA branches, in contrast to the strong language of this year’s version.

“What has attracted attention is that the directive has called on Chinese forces to be prepared to fight using a particular Chinese term,” said Taylor Fravel, an expert on Chinese foreign policy and security at MIT.

The term, according to a report in the South China Morning Post, is dazhang, which means “fighting wars.” The phrase did not appear in last year’s directive.

While the official directive does not mention Japan, a commentary about the directive also appearing in the People’s Liberation Army Daily makes clear that Japan is the would-be adversary.

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