“Regular army units were used at Tiananmen Square”
In the strict sense, China has no “Regular Army.” The People’s Liberation Army is an arm of, and answers solely to the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party. The governmental Ministry of Defense is a veneer, much like the government itself, used by the PLA to deal with foreign militaries.
They are, more or less, equivalent of the Nazi Waffen SS, on a much larger scale.
[In the strict sense, China has no “Regular Army.” The People’s Liberation Army is an arm of, and answers solely to the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party. The governmental Ministry of Defense is a veneer, much like the government itself, used by the PLA to deal with foreign militaries.
They are, more or less, equivalent of the Nazi Waffen SS, on a much larger scale.]
The theory part relates to the fact each commander views his unit as *his* army, pretty much the way every military commander in Chinese history has had a proprietary view vis-a-vis the men under his command. As is the case elsewhere, Chinese strategic thought emphasizes learning the lessons of history. Chinese history, while distorted by its historians’ tendency towards homily, is fairly good about detailing the major players and their interactions in any given time period even 1000 years before China’s unification.
What won’t have escaped the attention of attentive military commanders is the way in which many of China’s emperors are derived from ranks of military men who had sworn allegiance to the former dynasty, yet seized upon the first opportunity available to topple that dynasty. In some cases, they acted as regents similar to Japan’s Tokugawa Shogunate. In others, they killed the emperor outright.
What’s more, this knowledge is part of the popular culture, in the form of elaborate costume dramas that are broadcast on Chinese TV every evening. These ancient machinations aren’t just buried in dusty tomes in some remote library - they are unavoidable in today’s China, whether through prime time TV programs, historical documentaries, hefty historical works in book stores and even in the historical romances (in the literary sense) that comprise two of China’s great works of literature - The Water Margin and The Three Kingdoms.
Re the Water Margin and the Three Kingdoms, Mao said these were practically how-to manuals to him. I expect he meant in the sense of how to scheme and back-stab your way to the top, and fend off all challengers once you get there. Mao’s peers and near-peers thought the Communist Revolution heralded a new era of fraternal feelings among fellow travelers on the road towards socialism. Whereas Mao was fully-committed to yet another cycle of the deadly millennia-old court intrigues revolving around the dragon throne. In retrospect, it’s not entirely surprising that he won hands down.