China Leadership Monitor No. 26

Fall 2008:
Military Affairs
By James Mulvenon

The 2008 Beijing Olympics is China’s debut as a global power, and the Beijing leadership made it clear that it wanted everything to go perfectly. After the riots and crackdown in Tibet, protests around the Olympic torch, and bombings in Xinjiang, however, pressure on the security apparatus to fulfill the leadership’s wishes was intense. This article examines the role of the People’s Liberation Army’s in ensuring Olympic security, and assesses the implications of the security command structure for civil-military relations.

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