Every year on 1 August, Chinese television carries footage of soldiers in dress uniform, newspapers print editorials about loyalty, and buildings across the country display the characters 八一, “eight-one”, the date of Army Day. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is one of the largest military forces in the world, with roughly two million active personnel after the cuts announced in 2015. It is also an unusual institution. It is not, constitutionally or in practice, a national army answering to the state in the way most armies do. It is the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party, and it has been so since before the People’s Republic existed.
This article traces the story of China’s party army, from the failed Nanchang Uprising of 1 August 1927 that brought it into being to Xi Jinping’s reforms and purges that have reached the top of the Central Military Commission. It covers its wars and what it has done since 1949, its role in politics and how the Party commands the gun, how it is organised today, and how deeply it has marked Chinese culture, from Lei Feng to Army Day parades. It aims to be neither a celebration nor an indictment. Where figures are disputed, as casualty numbers from several of its wars are, the disagreement is noted rather than resolved.
A gunshot in Nanchang
The PLA dates its birth to 1 August 1927. Earlier that year the alliance between the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) and the Communists had collapsed, and Chiang Kai-shek’s forces had begun killing Communists in Shanghai and elsewhere. In response, Communist Party leaders in the Nationalist army staged an uprising in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province. According to official Chinese party histories, Zhou Enlai, as secretary of the Party’s front committee, led the rising together with He Long, Ye Ting, Zhu De and Liu Bocheng, commanding a little over 20,000 troops of the National Revolutionary Army who were under Communist control or influence.
Militarily, the uprising failed. Britannica notes that the rebels held the city for only a few days before retreating south, where most of the force was scattered. Its significance was political. It was the first time the Communist Party had fought the Nationalists with an army of its own, and the official histories describe it as “the first shot” of armed resistance. On 30 June 1933, the Party’s Central Revolutionary Military Commission, then based in the Jiangxi Soviet, decided that 1 August would be marked as the founding day of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. That date became Army Day, and the red star and the characters 八一 still appear on the army’s flag.
The foundations of Party control were laid within months. In September 1927, after the failed Autumn Harvest Uprising, Mao Zedong reorganised his remaining troops at Sanwan in Jiangxi and, in a principle still taught today, placed a Party branch in every company (支部建在连上). In December 1929, the Gutian Conference in Fujian adopted a resolution that subordinated military affairs to politics and institutionalised Party representatives in the ranks. Mao gave the idea its most famous form in 1938, in “Problems of War and Strategy”: “Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.”
From the Red Army to the Long March
The Red Army grew in the rural base areas of south and central China. Mao and Zhu De joined forces in the Jinggang Mountains in 1928, and Britannica puts the growth of the army under them at from about 5,000 troops in 1929 to 200,000 in 1933. Chiang Kai-shek launched a series of encirclement campaigns against the Jiangxi Soviet, and the fifth, using lines of blockhouses to strangle the base, succeeded.
In October 1934, the Red Army broke out and began what became known as the Long March. Britannica states that about 86,000 troops left the Jiangxi base and that Mao reached northern Shaanxi in October 1935 with about 8,000 survivors. Those numbers need care. Several separate Red Army forces made their own marches, some joining later, and “arrived” can be defined in different ways; the widely quoted figure of 12,500 km (25,000 li) for the distance covered has also been questioned by researchers who have retraced the route. What is not disputed is the political outcome. At the Zunyi Conference in January 1935, Mao gained a leading role in military affairs, and the survivors formed the core of the leadership that would govern China for decades. The march became the founding legend of both the army and the Party.
War against Japan and the civil war
After Japan’s full-scale invasion in 1937, the Communists and Nationalists formed a second united front. On 25 August 1937, the main Red Army forces in the north-west were redesignated the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army, and on 12 October 1937 Red Army guerrilla units left behind in southern China became the New Fourth Army. Both were nominally part of the Nationalist military. The Eighth Route Army operated mainly behind Japanese lines in north China, and the New Fourth Army in the lower Yangtze region. The united front was always uneasy. In January 1941, Nationalist forces attacked the New Fourth Army’s headquarters column in southern Anhui, killing or capturing much of it. The Nationalist government then abolished the force’s designation, and the Communists rebuilt its headquarters within weeks.
How much of the fighting against Japan each side did remains a subject of historical argument. The Nationalist armies fought most of the large conventional battles and took the heaviest losses, while the Communist forces concentrated on guerrilla warfare and on expanding their base areas and membership. Chinese official histories today stress the Communist role; many Western and Taiwanese historians give more weight to the Nationalists. Both sides’ contributions were real.
After Japan’s surrender in 1945, civil war resumed. The term “People’s Liberation Army” came into use in 1946, and on 10 October 1947 a “Manifesto of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army” made it the formal name of the whole force. Between September 1948 and January 1949, three campaigns, Liaoshen in the north-east, Huaihai in the east and Pingjin around Beijing and Tianjin, decided the war. Official figures credit the PLA with eliminating, capturing or absorbing more than 1.54 million Nationalist troops in those 142 days, many through surrenders and defections. Chiang retreated to Taiwan, a story this site has told in its piece on Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic on 1 October 1949. Why the Communists won is itself contested, as the site’s review of Red Dawn over China discusses.
Korea, India and Vietnam
The new state’s first war came almost at once. In October 1950, as United Nations forces advanced towards the Yalu river, Chinese troops entered Korea under the name of the Chinese People’s Volunteers, commanded by Peng Dehuai. The war, known in China as the War to Resist America and Aid Korea, pushed UN forces back from the Chinese border and ended in an armistice in July 1953 roughly along the pre-war line. Mao’s eldest son, Mao Anying, was killed in an air raid on the Volunteers’ headquarters in November 1950.
Chinese losses remain disputed. In 2010, Major General Xu Yan of the National Defence University wrote that about 114,000 Volunteers were killed in action or accidents and put total Chinese deaths from all causes at about 180,000; the Korean War memorial’s roll of martyrs had reached 183,108 by then, and later official figures have been given as 197,653. American and UN estimates made during and after the war were much higher, around 400,000 dead. The Chinese figures rest on medical and civil-affairs records; the Western ones were largely battlefield estimates. Neither can be independently checked.
In 1962, a long-running dispute over the Himalayan border erupted into war with India. The PLA attacked on 20 October in both the eastern and western sectors and routed Indian forces. China then declared a unilateral ceasefire effective on 21 November and withdrew in the east to roughly the McMahon Line it disputed, while keeping control of Aksai Chin in the west. The border remains undemarcated, and clashes in the Galwan valley in 2020 were the deadliest in decades.
The third war was with Vietnam. On 17 February 1979, weeks after Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and shortly after Deng Xiaoping’s visit to the United States, the PLA invaded northern Vietnam in what Beijing called a “self-defensive counter-attack”. It captured several provincial capitals and announced its withdrawal on 5 March, completing it by 16 March. The campaign exposed serious weaknesses in command, logistics and equipment. Casualty figures are again contested: China said at the time that it had suffered about 20,000 killed and wounded; figures later attributed to Chinese military sources put deaths at around 7,000 to 8,500; Vietnamese claims and some Western estimates are considerably higher. Border skirmishes continued through the 1980s.
The army in politics
The PLA’s political role has been as significant as its battlefield record. During the Cultural Revolution, which this site has discussed in its piece on the Great Leap and its aftermath, the army was both a tool and a stabiliser. Under Defence Minister Lin Biao, its General Political Department compiled Quotations from Chairman Mao, the “Little Red Book”, published in 1964 and later distributed in hundreds of millions of copies. Military ranks were abolished in 1965. In March 1967, as Red Guard factions fought each other and local government collapsed, the Central Military Commission ordered the army to carry out the “three supports and two militaries” (三支两军): supporting the left, industry and agriculture, and imposing military control and military training. Soldiers ran factories, schools and provincial administrations. Lin Biao was named Mao’s successor in 1969, the same year the PLA clashed with Soviet troops on the Ussuri river, but he died in a plane crash in Mongolia in September 1971 after an alleged coup plot, and the army’s political weight was gradually reduced.
The most controversial moment in its history came in 1989. Martial law was declared in Beijing on 20 May during mass protests centred on Tiananmen Square, and on the night of 3 to 4 June troops forced their way into the city centre, firing on civilians. The death toll has never been established. The Chinese government’s figures at the time were around 200 to 300, including soldiers. A US Embassy assessment later called 2,600 “not an unreasonable estimate”, a figure widely but wrongly attributed to the Chinese Red Cross, which denied it. A British diplomatic cable, declassified in 2017, relayed an unverified claim of at least 10,000 civilian deaths. Most evidence-based estimates fall between several hundred and a few thousand. The subject remains censored in China.
From Deng’s cuts to Xi’s reforms
Deng Xiaoping, himself a former political commissar, set out to make the army smaller, more professional and less political. In 1985 he announced a reduction of one million troops, which official figures say was completed by 1990. Further cuts of 500,000 were announced in 1997 and 200,000 in 2003. Military ranks were restored in 1988. The 1990s and 2000s brought steadily rising budgets and new equipment, from fighter aircraft to missiles; the site’s article on the J-20 stealth fighter tells one part of that story. In 1998 the army was ordered to give up most of the commercial businesses it had built up in the reform era.
The most sweeping change came under Xi Jinping. At the 3 September 2015 parade marking the end of the Second World War, Xi announced a further cut of 300,000, bringing the force to about two million. On 31 December 2015, a separate Army headquarters, the Rocket Force (upgraded from the Second Artillery) and the Strategic Support Force were created. In January 2016, the four general departments that had run the PLA since the 1950s were replaced by 15 functional bodies directly under the Central Military Commission. On 1 February 2016, the seven military regions were abolished and replaced by five theatre commands, Eastern, Southern, Western, Northern and Central, designed for joint operations across services. A Joint Logistics Support Force followed in September 2016.
The structure changed again on 19 April 2024. The Strategic Support Force was abolished, and its functions were divided among a new Information Support Force and a separate Aerospace Force and Cyberspace Force. According to the Ministry of National Defence, the PLA now consists of four services, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Rocket Force, and four arms, the Aerospace Force, Cyberspace Force, Information Support Force and Joint Logistics Support Force, all under the Central Military Commission. The Navy is now among the largest in the world by number of ships, a story that deserves, and is getting, its own article on this site.
Purges at the top
Alongside restructuring has come an anti-corruption campaign of unusual depth. Two former vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission, Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, were brought down in Xi’s first term. Since 2023, the campaign has reached further. Two former defence ministers, Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe, were expelled from the Party in June 2024. On 17 October 2025, the defence ministry announced the expulsion of nine senior officers, including He Weidong, a vice-chairman of the Commission and Politburo member; Miao Hua, the former head of its Political Work Department; and former commanders of the Eastern Theatre, the Rocket Force and the People’s Armed Police. At the Party’s Fourth Plenum later that month, General Zhang Shengmin, the Commission’s anti-corruption chief, was promoted to vice-chairman.
In January 2026, the defence ministry said that Zhang Youxia, the senior vice-chairman and China’s highest-ranking general, and Liu Zhenli, chief of the Joint Staff Department, were under investigation. They were removed from the state Central Military Commission on 28 August 2026, and on 21 September 2026 Xinhua reported that both had been expelled from the Party and the military for forming “self-serving cliques”, disloyalty and accepting “a huge sum of bribes”, with their cases passed to military prosecutors. Reuters noted that their removal left the formerly seven-member Commission with only two active members, Xi and Zhang Shengmin. The official explanation is corruption. Outside analysts debate how far the purges also reflect concerns about loyalty, procurement failures or readiness; with little evidence released, those explanations remain informed speculation.
How the Party commands the gun
The purges illustrate the central fact of the PLA’s organisation: it answers to the Party. Supreme command lies with the Central Military Commission. Formally there are two commissions, one of the Party and one of the state, but they have identical membership, and the chairman, currently Xi Jinping, is also Party general secretary. The Ministry of National Defence handles external relations and administration but does not command troops.
Inside units, the system Mao built at Sanwan and Gutian survives. Units have both a military commander and a political commissar, of equal rank, and decisions are formally taken by the unit’s Party committee. Company-level units have political instructors and Party branches. The CMC’s Political Work Department oversees personnel, propaganda and ideological education, and its Discipline Inspection Commission investigates misconduct. Official statements, including Xi’s address at the founding of the Information Support Force in 2024, repeatedly stress the “absolute leadership” of the Party over the armed forces. Proposals heard in the reform era to “nationalise” the army, placing it under the state rather than the Party, are rejected in official doctrine.
China’s armed forces are broader than the PLA itself. The People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force for internal security and emergency response, was moved out of the State Council’s chain of command and placed under the Party Central Committee and the Central Military Commission from 1 January 2018; the China Coast Guard was placed under it on 1 July 2018. The militia, made up of civilians organised through workplaces and local governments, is legally part of the armed forces and trained for support roles in war and disaster relief. China’s Military Service Law provides for conscription, and since 2020 recruitment has taken place twice a year rather than once. In practice, according to Britannica and most foreign analysts, volunteers have generally met the army’s needs, and the law’s emphasis has shifted towards attracting educated recruits with technical skills.
The army in Chinese culture
Few institutions have shaped modern Chinese popular culture as deeply. The best-known example is Lei Feng, a young soldier who died in an accident on 15 August 1962, aged 22. His diary, published after his death, portrayed a life of selfless service. Mao’s inscription “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng” appeared on the front page of People’s Daily on 5 March 1963, and 5 March is still marked as a day for volunteering and good deeds. Questions have long been raised about how far his diary and photographs were edited or staged; for the Party, he remains a model citizen, and for many Chinese people a byword for helpfulness.
During the Cultural Revolution, the eight “revolutionary model works” promoted by Jiang Qing dominated the stage, and several, including Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, The Red Detachment of Women and Shajiabang, celebrated the Red Army, the New Fourth Army or PLA scouts. The army ran its own film studio, the August First Film Studio, founded in 1952, and its own newspaper, PLA Daily (解放军报), which began publishing on 1 January 1956 and remains the authoritative voice of the Central Military Commission. The “March of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army”, written in 1939 as the song of the Eighth Route Army, was formally adopted as the army’s anthem by the Central Military Commission on 25 July 1988.
Military themes are also commercially powerful. Wolf Warrior 2 (2017), about a former special forces soldier rescuing Chinese citizens in Africa, took about 5.69 billion yuan at the box office, and its star’s career and the diplomatic nickname it inspired are covered in the site’s piece on Wu Jing and the Wolf Warrior films. In 2021, The Battle at Lake Changjin, about Chinese Volunteers fighting US Marines in Korea in 1950, overtook it with about 5.77 billion yuan to become China’s highest-grossing film, until the animated Ne Zha 2 surpassed it in 2025. Such films are made with official support and reflect official narratives, but their earnings show a large audience.
Military parades are the most visible public ritual. Major parades have been held in Beijing for National Day anniversaries, most recently the 70th in 2019, and for the anniversaries of victory over Japan in 2015 and 2025. The parade of 3 September 2025, marking 80 years since the end of the war, was attended by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and displayed new missiles, drones and a laser air-defence system, as the BBC and CNN reported. The Party presents parades as displays of national strength; foreign governments read them as signals of capability.
The army also reaches into the economy and society. In January 2017, the Politburo set up a Central Commission for Military-Civil Fusion, chaired by Xi, to coordinate civilian and defence research and industry. Western governments see this as a channel for civilian technology to reach the military, and it has been cited in US export controls. Veterans are another constituency. Protests by former soldiers over pensions and jobs in the 2010s were followed by the creation of a Ministry of Veterans Affairs in April 2018 and a Veterans Protection Law in force from 1 January 2021.
Conclusion
The People’s Liberation Army began as a failed mutiny in a provincial city and became the force that won a civil war, fought the United States to a standstill in Korea and underpinned one-party rule for more than seven decades. Its history includes episodes that official accounts celebrate, such as the Long March and the war against Japan, and episodes they prefer not to discuss, above all 1989. Figures for several of its wars remain uncertain and are likely to stay so while archives stay closed.
What has not changed since Nanchang is the principle that the Party commands the gun. Xi’s reforms, the new services created in 2024 and the purges that have reached the very top of the Central Military Commission all serve that principle as much as they serve military effectiveness. For outsiders trying to understand the PLA, its equipment and budgets matter, but so does the fact that it is, first and last, a party army, and one whose symbols, songs, heroes and films are part of everyday Chinese life.
