Active Defense: China's Military Strategy since 1949

by M. Taylor Fravel

Overview

What changes in China’s modern defense policy reveal about military organizations and strategy

Active Defense offers the first systematic look at China’s military strategy from the mid-twentieth century to today. Exploring the range and intensity of threats that China has faced, M. Taylor Fravel illuminates the nation’s past and present military goals, and offers a rich set of cases for deepening the study of how and why states alter their defense policies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691210339
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/08/2020
Series:	Princeton Studies in International History and Politics , #2
Pages:	396
Sales rank:	287,938
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

M. Taylor Fravel is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Strong Borders, Secure Nation (Princeton). Twitter @fravel

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Abbreviations xv

Introduction 1

1 Explaining Major Change in Military Strategy 9

2 The CCP's Military Strategies before 1949 39

3 The 1956 Strategy: "Defending the Motherland" 72

4 The 1964 Strategy: "Luring the Enemy in Deep" 107

5 The 1980 Strategy: "Active Defense" 139

6 The 1993 Strategy: "Local Wars under High-Technology Conditions" 182

7 China's Military Strategies since 1993: "Informatization" 217

8 China's Nuclear Strategy since 1964 236

Conclusion 270

Notes 279

Bibliography 339

Index 363

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Active Defense confirms Fravel’s standing as one of the top experts on China's national security strategy. His mastery of history, political science theory, and military doctrine is extraordinary. Given growing Sino-American competition, this is a timely work, relevant to policymakers, strategists, and scholars alike."—Karl Eikenberry, Stanford University and former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan

"Active Defense is a major contribution to our understanding of Chinese military doctrine. Anyone interested in the implications of China’s rise should read this book."—Thomas J. Christensen, author of The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power

"Active Defense is a brilliant tour de force on the sources of stasis and change in Chinese military strategy. Engaging and highly original, this is a must-read for scholars, analysts, policymakers, and anyone seeking to understand the future of international politics."—Caitlin Talmadge, Georgetown University

"This is a truly outstanding book—Fravel contributes significantly to our understanding of the evolution of China’s military strategy, and offers insightful theoretical arguments about civil-military relations and changes in the military strategy of late developers. Active Defense will be of great interest to scholars of security studies, Chinese international policy, and international relations more broadly."—Charles Glaser, George Washington University

"In Active Defense, Fravel’s explanation for three major changes in China’s military strategy since 1949 is an impressive achievement. He deftly draws on a wide range of literature about influences on military strategy and taps newly available sources of evidence. The result is a book that is sure to be widely cited."—Avery Goldstein, University of Pennsylvania

"Active Defense advances our knowledge of the key drivers behind China’s military strategy during the last seventy years. Informative and lucid, this book provides new insights into how a great power adjusts its military strategy in response to shifts in warfare and how elite politics influences strategic execution. This is the most important study of Chinese national security to appear in a decade."—Minxin Pei, Claremont McKenna College

"This terrific book makes an important contribution to the literature on both China’s military behavior and the more general issue of how states’ militaries evolve to meet the threats before them. The theoretical argument is simple, yet innovative, and the empirical evidence is novel and compellingly presented. It is certain to become a classic."—David M. Edelstein, Georgetown University

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