China Sprucing Up the Troops

By Michael S. Serrill

When Yang Baibing took the podium before a committee of the National People's Congress, China's highest legislative body, the simple insignia on his olive- drab uniform gave no hint of his position as the army's top political commissar. But that will soon change. For Yang proposed restoring to the People's Liberation Army a system of military ranks once denounced by Maoists as "feudal, capitalist and revisionist."

Yang's eleven-grade hierarchy is the latest in a series of military reforms designed to transform the once poorly equipped and highly politicized revolutionary army into a modern, professional force. The ranking system will be accompanied by the introduction of trimly tailored uniforms complete with stars, flaps, epaulets and braid to replace the regulation green mandated for all soldiers by the fiercely egalitarian Mao.

The new ranks and vestments are intended to enhance morale in an army whose power and prestige have been diminished by Chinese leaders determined to de- emphasize military might in favor of agricultural and industrial reform. After consolidating his power in 1978, Deng Xiaoping used a mixture of cajolery, cash incentives and hard-knuckle politics to oust military officers from top provincial and party posts. Since 1985, 1 million men and women, including 455,000 officers, have been mustered out. Though still 3.5 million strong, the PLA has lost its position as the world's largest military organization to the 5.2 million-member Soviet armed forces. Last week Beijing announced that another 70,000 army officers would relinquish their uniforms and take government jobs. The military's share of the national budget, now $5.8 billion, has declined from 17.5% in 1979 to 8.5%. (The U.S. spends $292 billion, or 27% of its budget.)

The reductions have been helped by Deng's successful economic revitalization. "Luckily, the army is not so attractive to the farm boys as it once was," says a Western diplomat in Beijing. "Today they are earning good money on the farms." To make ends meet, the generals have been forced to become entrepreneurs themselves, selling weapons to foreign countries to bring in extra cash. Western leaders have criticized them for selling Silkworm missiles to Iran and CSS-2 medium-range missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, to Saudi Arabia.

The money earned from such sales is used not only to buy tanks, planes and other equipment but to develop new fighting strategies. Over the past three years the Chinese have created what they call "integrated corps," units of soldiers, sailors and marines, to fight potential invaders, and "fist squads," rapid-deployment forces designed to handle skirmishes along China's 4,150-mile border with the Soviet Union.

China's top military leaders have not always gone along with Deng's changes. Last year Deng, 83, was forced to remove his chosen successor, Hu Yaobang, from his most important offices partly because he was seen as antimilitary. His successor, Zhao Ziyang, is also a reformer, but one who is apparently acceptable to the PLA. When the new ranking system takes effect in the fall, Zhao is considered a strong candidate for promotion to senior general, the highest military grade.

With reporting by Sandra Burton and Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing