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Xi Jinping has encouraged the People’s Liberation Army to be able to ‘fight and win wars’ while remaining ‘absolutely loyal’ to the Chinese Communist Party. This latter focus was the result of problems of excessive autonomy invested in the PLA under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, which manifested in military secrecy, corruption, and questions of ideological commitment. Xi has attempted to enhance party control (and his own authority as the ‘core’ of the party) through a multifaceted political strategy that includes centralization of power under his control, renewed ideological campaigns, and improved internal control mechanisms. Nevertheless, Xi is unlikely to meet this standard because the military remains fundamentally a self-policing organization with almost no genuine civilian party oversight. This means that the prospects for party-army tensions and even crises remain and could grow in the post-Xi era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United States and Republic of Korea (ROK) leaders have tried to manage their respective approaches to China to avoid creating problems in bilateral relations and in the U.S.-ROK alliance. U.S. policymakers have been careful not to place Seoul in the position of having to choose between Washington and Beijing. However, a U.S. military conflict with China would bring differences in U.S. and ROK interests to the fore and force South Korean leaders to make tough choices in response to U.S. requests for diplomatic, economic, and military support. This paper considers what types of diplomatic and economic support the United States might expect from the ROK in the event of a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan. It then examines potential U.S. requests for military support from the ROK in three scenarios: 1) a PRC joint firestrike campaign intended to inflict sufficient damage to compel Taiwan to negotiate its political status with Beijing; 2) a PRC joint blockade intended to inflict sufficient damage to Taiwan's economy to compel negotiations; and 3) a joint island landing campaign intended to seize Taiwan and bring it under PRC control. Each involves a different type of military conflict, a different projected duration, and different military demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following pages feature the corrected version of Erica Strecker Downs and Phillip C. Saunders, 'Legitimacy and the Limits of Nationalism: China and the Diaoyu Islands,' Vol. 23, No. 3 [...]

Chinese Ambassadors: The Rise of Diplomatic Professionalism Since 1949 by Xiaohong Liu. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2001. 282 PP. Cloth, $50.00, paper $25.00. Liu describes the gradual transformation of [...]