I've been reading a decent chunk of Chinese webnovels in my free time. They're largely, well, terribly written power fantasies. But I've noticed a trend where when the military shows up, they often seem to be depicted as a sort of entirely different power that's barely related to the Communist Party. Obviously, these sort of books are going to simplify and be skewed in favor of telling a story, and will not be accurate. But with enough books painting a picture of a military with its own companies, compounds (that read different from a military base) filled with mansions for old generals and guarded by privates, and a disconnect from the general workings of normal civilian life, it makes me wonder how true it might be, and how that came about.
To give an example, in these sort of stories, say the protagonist makes a friend with the child of a military leader or grandchild of an old veteran who fought in the Civil War. When they get into a conflict with a rich fuerdai (which seem to be a catchall for all rich sons and daughters of Chinese business elite) or a princeling (same as above, but with politicians) and are in trouble with either the police or some such, they can go to the compound and enjoy a nice dinner with their friend's family, and the police can't interfere and members of the civil service can only shrug their shoulders. The sons of PLA officers are expected to go into the military themselves where they become the next generation leaders of the PLA and establish their own separate power base.
That sort of thinking seems pretty alien to me as an American, whose cultural experience with military kids is that of military brats who keep moving around the country, and whose parents identities as soldiers would be irrelevant in most cases.
In the Soviet Union, the party remade the army. In China, the army remade the party, then the party declared independence.
During its earliest years, the Chinese Communist Party had a structure and leadership that resembled that of other Communist parties around the world: led by intellectuals, following the Leninist line, under Soviet military and political advisorship. When Chiang Kai Shek made war upon the Communists in 1927, they resisted using Soviet military doctrine, with disastrous results. In 1935, the "military clique" of the party, led by Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, and Lin Biao ousted the old leadership and their Soviet advisors, then rewrote Chinese Communism in their image. Their main ideological vehicle was the writings of Chairman Mao, which were in practice drawn from the "table talk" of this small group of generals. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of Mao's writings focus on military topics, and those that address economics do so only in brief, and by drawing on his experience running wartime "base areas".
None of the leaders of the military faction were genuine Communists in the early 1920s. Zhu was a warlord, Peng was a senior officer in a warlord's army, Lin Biao was personally instructed by Chiang Kai Shek, and Mao was an entrepreneur whose bookstore franchise had just opened its 14th location. Before joining the Communist Party, Mao had campaigned for Hunan's secession from China. Nor were any of the leaders well acquainted with Marxist theory - they would only become so under intellectuals' tutelage in the 1930s. The primary focus of the new ruling clique was the survival of the party form a military perspective, and all their ideological thought attempted to adapt what they knew of Communist theory to the realities of conducting war against a numerically and materially superior enemy.
The militarists' control of the "Party Center" remained uncontested until the end of the Chinese Civil War. After taking control of the country, however, they were presented with immense administrative challenges which could not be solved using Maoist scripture alone. Mobilizing the countryside to produce crude weapons was a much simpler business than governing hundreds of millions of people and handling all aspects of their lives. To respond to these complexities, New China was forced to copy some of the methods of Old China. The newly formed PRC's administration started to mirror that of the late Qing's almost immediately: there were almost the same number of counties, in almost the same places. The PRC restored the village headman system, Qing-era ethnic management principles, and the Qing-era waterwork construction method.
A major conflict soon emerged between those who wanted to govern China based on precedent, and those who wanted to build a new country with the PLA as their model. The latter camp were behind the notorious Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, but also presided over successes like the literacy program. In general, during Mao's lifetime, the militarist camp was dominant, but their power began to wane due to infighting in the early 1970s, coming to an end after Mao's death.
The victor in the post-Mao struggle for control of the Party Center, Deng Xiaoping, reversed many of the gains the militarists had made in the past 30 years towards reshaping the government in their image, and rebuilt many traditional institutions. As a former general, he carried enough respect within the PLA to avoid a coup. His successor, Jiang Zemin, had no such credentials, and was forced to reach an understanding with the military to prevent them from becoming a threat to his rule. It is not known whether this understanding was negotiated with or imposed upon the PLA, nor the exact contents, but what is clear is that the army's culture and its role in politics changed dramatically during Jiang's reign. The army effectively lived within a 'walled garden': the party showered the brass with luxuries and allowed them to take bribes, but they no longer interfered in politics. Jiang also stripped them of most of their companies.
As a result of this process, the "state within a state" was born. While initially the PRC could be characterized as an "army with a country", the dynamic between civil and military officials shifted during the late 1970s and resolved decisively in the early 1990s. As for the characterization of the PLA in web novels - obviously it can't be entirely correct, but the image of generals living in luxury and having some measure of protection from officials has been true since the early Jiang years.
Sources
CCP Central Archives：
- Documents of the CCP Organization's History, 1921–1997 (comp. by CCP Organization Department)
- Selected Documents of the CCP Central Committee, 1921–49
CCP Party Historical Research Division: Major Historical Events of the CCP, 1919–87.
National Defense University Archive: Reference Materials on Teaching and Studying CCP History.
Books:
Dai Yi. Concicse History of the Qing.
Li Ke and Hao Shengzhang. The PLA during the Cultural Revolution.
Spence, Jonathan. Mao Zedong.
Rowe, William. China's Last Empire: The Great Qing.
Li Xiaobing. A History of the Modern Chinese Army.
Kau, Michael Y. M., ed. The Lin Biao Affair: Power Politics and Military Coup.
Fravel, M. Taylor. Active Defense: China's Military Strategy since 1949.