IN-DEPTH BRIEFING // #93 // OCTOBER 25
A MARCH WEST:
THE WESTERN THEATRE COMMAND AND CHINA’S POWER PROJECTION AUTHOR
Philip Reid Visiting Fellow, CHACR
The Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research is the British Army’s think tank and tasked with enhancing the conceptual component of its fighting power. The views expressed in this In Depth Briefing are those of the author, and not of the CHACR, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Ministry of Defence or British Army. The aim of the briefing is to provide a neutral platform for external researchers and experts to offer their views on critical issues. This document cannot be reproduced or used in part or whole without the permission of the CHACR. www.chacr.org.uk
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HE first serial of this In-Depth Briefing reviewed the Western Theatre Command (WTC) of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), its training and testing facilities, and role in the Joint Operational Command system. The second and third serials will examine the WTC’s ability to project combat power beyond China’s north-western borders. The baseline scenario to do so is an armed insurrection in a Central Asian Republic or the Russian Federation’s Central Military District, with a mandate from the host government or direction from the Central Military Commission to intervene through offensive operations. The opposing force is assumed to have seized control of a local or regional political centre and constitute anywhere between a brigade and an army-sized element of a national force, though lacking strategic offensive capabilities that would threaten Chinese
territory. This meets the PLA doctrinal definition of a ‘local war under informatized conditions’ as opposed to a border skirmish or counterterrorism operation delegated to the Military Sub-Districts and the People’s Armed Police. The hypothetical battlespace may be conjectured along four separate axes. To the North, across the Altai Mountains, the Russian 41st Guards Combined Arms Army is concentrated around Novosibirsk – the administrative centre of the Siberian Federal District. To the North West is the Kazakh political capital of Astana and Omsk – a Russian industrial and transportation hub, home to the 33rd Guards Missile Army Headquarters as well as a railway logistics brigade and an air assault regiment. Directly West lies Kazakhstan’s economic hub – Almaty, followed by Bishkek and Tashkent: the capital cities of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan respectively.
1 // IN-DEPTH BRIEFING // CHACR
PART 2 Along a more South-Westerly axis lies the Fergana Valley – a locus for Islamist militancy and border clashes between Uzbek, Tajik and Kyrgyz forces, as well as Gorno-Badakhshan – a Tajik Autonomous Oblast that has been engaged in a longstanding political, and at times violent, conflict with a regime in Dushanbe seen as dependent on Beijing’s largess. While this geography implies the primacy of the 76th, a PLA Group Army is not intended to deploy as a standalone campaignlevel force but to act as a pool from which an ad-hoc taskorganised suite of capabilities – referred to in PLA doctrine as an ‘operational combat system’ – can be constructed. The novelty of continental warfare on such a scale, for the present generation of Chinese leaders, means that additional land, air and specialist formations would be surged from across the five theatres, and a dedicated operational command post established, likely