China’s Military Turns 80 With Flourish

VPM | By Anthony Kuhn

Published August 1, 2007 at 10:00 AM EDT

Updated July 7, 2023

Soldiers march outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing after a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the China's People's Liberation Army, Aug. 1, 2007.

China marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of its military with fanfare and a public-relations blitz. To show that its military modernization drive is transparent, foreign journalists were invited to a People’s Liberation Army base.

Infantry Brigade 196 is one of the People’s Liberation Army units charged with defending of China’s capital. The country’s growing defense budget has helped build new barracks and training facilities for the brigade’s 3,500 troops.

China’s published military budget for this year is almost $45 billion, up nearly 18 percent over last year. That’s the biggest defense budget in Asia, but it’s less than 10 percent of published figures for the U.S military budget.

The PLA is the world’s largest army, with 2.3 million members, and China points out that it spends about 1/47th of what the U.S. spends on each soldier.

In recent years, China has taken a number of moves to make the PLA more professional. It has built its own ROTC program to recruit better educated officers. It ordered the PLA to divest its extensive business holdings. And it has also reduced the number of political indoctrination classes.

But a main theme of the anniversary is that the ruling communist party will not allow the PLA to become too depoliticized. The party, after all, founded the PLA amid civil war in 1927.

And Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan wrote in a recent article that suggestions that the government take over the PLA from the party are tantamount to subversion.

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Anthony Kuhn

Anthony Kuhn is NPR's correspondent based in Seoul, South Korea, reporting on the Korean Peninsula, Japan, and the great diversity of Asia's countries and cultures. Before moving to Seoul in 2018, he traveled to the region to cover major stories including the North Korean nuclear crisis and the Fukushima earthquake and nuclear disaster.

Kuhn previously served two five-year stints in Beijing, China, for NPR, during which he covered major stories such as the Beijing Olympics, geopolitical jousting in the South China Sea, and the lives of Tibetans, Uighurs, and other minorities in China's borderlands.

He took a particular interest in China's rich traditional culture and its impact on the current day. He has recorded the sonic calling cards of itinerant merchants in Beijing's back alleys, and the descendants of court musicians of the Tang Dynasty. He has profiled petitioners and rights lawyers struggling for justice, and educational reformers striving to change the way Chinese think.

From 2010-2013, Kuhn was NPR's Southeast Asia correspondent, based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Among other stories, he explored Borneo and Sumatra, and witnessed the fight to preserve the biodiversity of the world's oldest forests. He also followed Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, as she rose from political prisoner to head of state.

Kuhn served as NPR's correspondent in London from 2004-2005, covering stories including the London subway bombings and the marriage of the Prince of Wales to the Duchess of Cornwall.

Besides his major postings, Kuhn's journalistic horizons have been expanded by various short-term assignments. These produced stories including wartime black humor in Iraq, musical diplomacy by the New York Philharmonic in Pyongyang, North Korea, a kerfuffle over the plumbing in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Pakistani artists' struggle with religious extremism in Lahore, and the Syrian civil war's spillover into neighboring Lebanon.

Prior to joining NPR, Kuhn wrote for the Far Eastern Economic Review and freelanced for various news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek. He majored in French literature as an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis, and later did graduate work at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American studies in Nanjing.

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