Author's note: Since the 19th CPC National Congress in 2017, Xi's political theory is known as "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era," a long phrase with each word carrying weight of meaning. Since then, "Xi Jinping Thought on…" has been expanded and applied to the economy, rule of law, ecology, strengthening the military, and diplomacy. In these five commentaries, I address each of these areas, seek to discern its distinguishing characteristics. This background will enable a close reading of the political proclamations at the upcoming CPC National Congress. The first commentary features Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military.

Why is Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military a central part of Xi Jinping's political philosophy? Its distinctive theme is to address the strategic needs of a strong country for a strong military, and to transform the PLA to help realize the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military covers all areas and aspects of military construction, reform and preparation for military struggle in the new era; it provides systematized guidelines and programs of action for the entire process of building and utilizing modern military forces.

Xi said, "Only by continuous reform and innovation, can the PLA constantly gain development vitality and put itself in an invincible position."

Officially, Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military is described by "Ten Clarifications," which are the overarching guidelines for the mission of a strong military, the goal of a strong military, the soul of a strong military, the essentials of a strong military, the foundation of a strong military, the organization of a strong military, the key to a strong military, the driving force of a strong military, the guarantee of a strong military, and the way of becoming a strong military.

I array these ideas into a systematic framework of goals, principles and strategies.

Strengthen the military goal:

* To build a world-class military that ensures national security, guarantees national sovereignty, protects territorial integrity, and provides the strategic support to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation by mid-century.

Strengthen the military principles: 

* Maintain peace through strength.

* A strong country must have a strong military.

* The Party must maintain absolute leadership over the military, and the military must maintain absolute loyalty to the Party. 

* The military must be able to prepare for wars, fight wars, contain wars, and win wars. 

* Reform is the only way to strengthen the military. 

Strengthen the military strategies: 

* Deepen political training. 

* Develop an upstanding workstyle, uphold integrity and discipline, fight corruption and punish evil. 

* Strengthen science and technology for national defense. 

* Stress innovation as the primary driving force for development: seeking combat effectiveness from scientific and technological innovation; promoting innovation in military theory, technology, organization, management, and culture; encouraging innovation-driven systems, modernization and regularization. 

* Stress military-civilian integration that is all-factors, multi-field, high-efficiency and in-depth, an integrated national strategic system. 

* Build global capabilities to protect Chinese citizens and interests and to support UN peacekeeping.

* Build a military rule of law system, a fundamental change in the way of governing the military.

Examples include: 

* Reorganizing the older seven military regions into the present five theater commands. 

* Integrating the various services into joint military operations. 

* Expanding the PLA Navy, including three aircraft carriers now and likely more to come, and many nuclear submarines. 

* Prioritizing information and AI-based warfare capabilities, including autonomous combat systems. 

* Removing and punishing senior generals for corruption, eliminating their factions to achieve absolute loyalty. 

* Focusing military training on actual combat and joint combat operations.

China has a "three-step" plan to comprehensively modernize military theory, organization and personnel, and develop state-of-the-art weapons and equipment: Significant progress by 2027, the PLA centenary; basic realization by 2035; a world-class military by mid-century.

It is said that Mao Zedong made China stand up; Deng Xiaoping made China become rich; and Xi Jinping is making China become strong.

The vision of Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military is clear: the purpose of the military is to fight and win wars — this is true of every military; this is what a military is — but war-fighting capabilities can be assessed only by war-fighting results.China, the US, all of us — hope we never find out.

I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn.

Script: Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Editors: Yang Yutong, Qi Haiming

Producer: Wang Ying

Supervisors: Ge Jing, Adam Zhu

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