軍事專業主義對中共黨軍關係的衝擊—以1995-1996年台海危機為例

Abstract Among various trends in Chinese Party-Army relations, professionalization of the People Liberation Army’s officer corps has received particular attention from scholars in the last decades. Most of the related scholarly research has been focused mainly on the institutional and organizational trends, as well as counter-trends, of the PLA professionalization reforms. Pioneering works like those of Ellis Joffe and Harlan Jencks, as well as more recent endeavors of younger scholars like James Mulvenon, succeeded in giving shape to a general consensus in this field. That is, the basic tension between professionalism and politicization in the Chinese officer corps is one of the main key trends and fundamental aspects of civil-military relations in mainland China, even more than it was for other communist countries. This paper starts from this basic assumption, and tries to explore the more political and sociological effects of the structural professionalization of the PLA’s officer corps. The first aim of this paper is to review carefully the meaning of military professionalism and the process of professionalization (as well as counter-trends associated with it ) that took place in the PLA at the macroscopic or organizational level during different political and historical phases in China. Attention will be given to those characteristic features and unique events in the Chinese political scene that at different times delayed or facilitated this process. The second aim is to probe the effects or these reforms on the sociological aspect of military professionalization, mainly professional corporatness and political role of the senior officer corps, in terms of military political power. The more empirical part of this research involves the case study of the 1995-1996 cross-strait crisis, from the perspective of the Chinese military establishment and its involvement in the decision-making process. The main finding of this paper is that professionalization at the macro-level has had profound consequences at the micro-level, enhancing PLA’s espirit de corps as a professional group, and causing a shift in the Chinese officer corps’ political role. Such shift is in part in line with the Huntingtonian concept of “Political Neutrality” at the domestic level, but entails also increased corporate pressure capabilities at other levels as described by sociologists of civil -military relations such as Benght Abrahamsson and Morris Janowitz.