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The PLAAF's evolution of operational capabilities is tied to the evolution of the PLAƒs overall doctrine and strategy. Chinaƒs communist leaders have long seen themselves as encircled by real or potentially hostile forces threatening the regime's security. They have also long sought to define a doctrine and strategy to deal with this situation. The PLA's doctrine has evolved from Mao Zedong's basic doctrine of people's war, which still retains a measure of influence in Chinese thinking, at least in broad conceptual terms. In 1985, the CMC radically revised China's doctrine and strategic defense policy by directing the armed forces to change from preparation for an "early, major, and nuclear war" to preparing for "local limited wars around China's borders, including its maritime territories and claims." Following the Gulf War, this doctrine was amended to "fight local wars under modern, high-technology conditions." Thus, people's war has evolved as a blend of defense and offense, and has been modified to incorporate various strategies, including active defense and the rapid-reaction strategy. (14)

In its essence, the people's war doctrine reflects a strategy of weakness. Since the PLA was founded in 1927, it has had to develop strategies for defeating adversaries which had superior weapons and equipment. That this dilemma should continue into the 21st century is no doubt frustrating to members of the current military hierarchy.

While people's war places special emphasis on defensive strategy and on the factor of manpower over weapons, the PLA has never ignored the need for an offensive strategy. The PLA's involvement in the Korean and Vietnam wars, plus its attacks against India in 1962 and Vietnam in 1979 - which were followed by quick, unilateral withdrawals - were all described as defensive operations. At the same time, Mao long recognized the value of utilizing superior force to overwhelm China's adversaries. Within the people's war doctrine, the basic military strategy Mao formulated, known as active defense, was one of a protracted, defensive war.

In a recent paper, Dr. Paul Godwin states that "the PLA has been shifting over the past twenty years from continental defense in depth to peripheral defense and maritime force projection, and from a ground-force dominated approach to war, to a multi-service joint operations doctrine. In conceptualizing the battlefield, the PLA has shifted from a two dimensional concept, where the ground war was the central focus, to a multidimensional battlespace, where space and cyberspace play roles as important as the traditional air-land-sea dimensions. The PLA has faced the major difficulty of the absence of any period of stability in which it could complete the organizational, training, and logistics changes required to implement a revised strategy and operational doctrine." (15)

Although PLAAF writings mention the broader PLA doctrine and strategic concepts of people's war, people's war under modern conditions, and people's war under modern, high-tech conditions, they tend to focus more on campaign strategy, campaign tactics, and tactical training.

As an arm of the PLA, the PLAAF has traditionally conducted its combat operations as a series of subordinate campaigns within the PLA's overall campaign. The PLAAF describes a campaign as "using from one to many aviation, air defense, or airborne units to carry out a series of combined battles according to a general battle plan to achieve a specified strategic or campaign objective in a specified time." (16) During March 1997, Commander Liu stated the PLAAF must improve its capabilities in actual combat by highlighting campaign and tactical training. He emphasized that campaign training involves air deterrence, air interdiction, air strikes, and participation in joint exercises. (17)

Although the PLA has always had an active defense strategy, one of the PLAAF's most significant developments in the past couple of years has been the public emphasis by Chinese leaders, including CMC Chairman Jiang Zemin, on the PLAAF's capability to fight offensive battles. What this means is that the PLAAF is beginning to acquire the types of weapon systems, such as the Su-27 and Il-76, that will allow the PLAAF to change its doctrine appropriately and move away from its purely defensive missions.