As a result of the 18^th Party Congress and its subsequent plenums, especially the Third Plenum in the fall of 2013, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has embarked on a broad set of institutional reforms, tackling training, political work, command and control, and corruption among others. These reform efforts fall under the purview of newly established “leading groups,” led by senior officials in the relevant offices. This article examines the personnel and institutional makeup of these new groups, outlines their declared and undeclared missions, and assesses the probability of their success.

On 31 December 2015, CCP supremo Xi Jinping announced the most sweeping reorganization of the People’s Liberation Army since the 1950s.

Hoover Institution fellow Kori Schake discusses national security challenges for the new administration.

As the Chinese Communist Party heads into the 19th Party Congress in October, Xi Jinping’s speech commemorating the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army was notable both for what he said and what he did not say.

In October 2017 at the first plenary session of the 19th Central Committee, Chinese state media announced the lineup of the new Central Military Commission (CMC). 

Security and Defense Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.

We cordially invite you to a series of discussions on nuclear nonproliferation.

A new military command takes a broad, sophisticated view of the U.S. role in a neglected continent. Its job won’t be easy. By James J. Hentz.

The 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS) called for a shift in objectives and methods in dealing with threats to national security from an emphasis on law enforcement to prevention based in part on the use of force. The NSS proposed that, in addition to continued reliance on diplomacy, economic sanctions, and other methods short of the use of force, the U.S. should resort to force in order to prevent grave dangers where necessary, in some cases even when the threat they pose is not imminent, and despite the absence of Security Council approval. These positions raise important and unsettled issues, which the sponsoring organizations propose to consider at a meeting on Preventive Force, to be held from May 25th to May 27th, 2005, at the headquarters of the Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park. It is being planned and organized by the Hoover Institution, in cooperation with the Hewlett Foundation and the Stanford Institute for International Studies. The meeting on Preventive Force will bring together a small group of practitioners, scholars, and officials experienced in the relevant fields of international security affairs to discuss the following issues among others: the need to consider using preventive force; the nature of preventive (as opposed to preemptive) force; the dangers of relying on preventive force as part of a national security strategy; the standards by which resort to preventive force should be governed, if its use is ever appropriate; and the principles and measures that might if adopted reduce the need to resort to preventive force. In addition to panels and speakers on these subjects, the meeting will include a televised session for the PBS program "Uncommon Knowledge," at which some of the participants will offer perspectives on the utility and wisdom of relying on preventive force as an avowed element of U.S. national security, and on the role of the Security Council in controlling such decisions. We will be joined by scholars from the Brookings Institution and members of the Princeton Project on National Security, sponsored by Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. We appreciate their help in preparing a program for the initial meetings. We will also have the participation of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation.