Wang Ke was born Wang Maoqing in August 1931 in Xiaoxian County, Jiangsu Province (later Anhui Province). In the early 1940s, this part of Jiangsu became an operating base for the New Fourth Army. With only an elementary school education, Wang joined the local unit of the New Fourth Army as a “young soldier” at the age of 13, serving as a communicator for the armed working team of Xiaoxian County. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commander of the local military subdistrict was Zhang Zhen, a future top People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer and powerful patron for Wang for the remainder of his career. Wang was reportedly personally trained by Zhang, who sent him first for additional education and tactics instruction.

The annual session of the National People's Congress held in March addressed concerns of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in three important areas. First, its announcement of the year's defense allocations within the larger state budget sheds light on the pace and scope of China's military modernization effort. Second, roughly ten percent of the delegates to the People's Congress and media attention to their deliberations provides insight into ongoing military issues. Last, the session adopted new regulations that illuminate institutional and doctrinal trends in China's military.

In anticipation of the party's Sixteenth National Congress this fall, Beijing has since the beginning of the year waged a massive campaign to overcome opposition to new political reforms intended to broaden the base of the Chinese Communist Party. At the congress, the central leadership seeks to lay the ideological foundations for the reforms by incorporating General Secretary Jiang Zemin's theme of the "three represents" into the party constitution. Judging by the scale of Beijing's campaign in recent months, intra-party resistance to these changes must be pervasive.

After Jiang Zemin delivered his groundbreaking speech on the communist party's anniversary last summer, there was much speculation about the strength of his political position and controversy over the meaning of the speech itself. Close examination of authoritative commentary, however, suggests that the speech has received strong support within the party and represents far more than the general secretary's personal views. Moreover, articles by party theoreticians based at the Central Party School indicate that Jiang's speech was intended to convey a program of wide-ranging political reform, albeit not one of democratization. This program of political reform is intended to meet the domestic and international challenges facing the party and to make the exercise of power in China better institutionalized and more stable.