China general urges army to obey CCP

At the same time, another general defended China’s military build-up in recent years as legitimate and called a Pentagon report critical of the expansion as subjective and biased.

Hu, 62, took formal control over the military from Jiang Zemin, 78, last September, completing China’s first smooth generational leadership change since the Communists won the civil war and swept to power in 1949.

But military sources say Hu, who replaced Jiang as Communist Party chief in November 2002 and state president in March 2003, has yet to fully consolidate power in the 2.5-million-strong People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Lieutenant-General Fu Tinggui urged senior officers to “obey and follow the party” in an essay on the front page of Monday’s edition of the Study Times, the organ of the party school which trains cadres. August 1 is marked each year as Army Day.

“When the socialist movement is at a low ebb, in the face of assault and enticement from hostile forces, and when one’s personal development is not smooth enough ... leading military cadres must unwaveringly adhere to the party’s absolute rule over the military,” Fu said.

“These political qualifications ... cannot weaken, cannot waver and cannot deviate at any time,” said Fu, who is political commissar of the Beijing Military Area Command, one of China’s seven military regions.

Loyalties are split between Hu and Jiang in the PLA, which plans to cut its numbers by 200,000 by the end of 2005.

Jiang, who promoted 79 men to full general rank during his 15 years in power, still wields some influence over the PLA.

Major-General Peng Guangqian blasted the latest Pentagon report as more fiction than fact in a recent interview with Outlook Weekly, published by the state news agency Xinhua. The U.S. Department of Defense report, made public in July, reflects concern over China’s military modernization and economic might and fears that a changing balance of power in Asia could threaten Taiwan.

, the self governing island Beijing has claimed as its own since the end of the civil war. “It exaggerated the Chinese military’s threat,” Peng said. “The content was more subjective than objective, more imagination than facts and more bias than rational.”

Peng called it “typical Cold War mentality” to try to block the European Union from lifting an arms embargo on China, imposed after PLA troops and tanks crushed the Tiananmen pro-democracy demonstrations on June 4, 1989 with heavy loss of life.

The report was also aimed at finding an excuse to sell weapons to China’s rival, Taiwan, after the Iraq war, he said.

“The United States does not wish for any country to develop rapidly,” said Peng, of the strategy research department at the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, a military think-tank.

But at the same time, Peng noted that the release of the report had been delayed twice since March. He indicated that it may have been watered down.

“The Department of Defense had no choice but to drop some things previously (in the report) that were even more ridiculous,” he added.

The Pentagon report said that China’s ability to project conventional power was limited and it lacked the capability to re-take Taiwan by force.

In March China passed an anti-secession law allowing the use of “non-peaceful means” to bring it back into the fold should the democratic island formally declare independence.

Yet another Chinese general was quoted as saying in July that China was ready to use nuclear weapons against the United States should Washington attack over Taiwan. U.S. officials called the remark “irresponsible.”

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