Summary
Years from now, students of the PLA may well look back at the decade of the 1990s as the period of time during which the PLA began to put into motion an ambitious series of reforms aimed at making the future Chinese armed forces a more professional force and a more operationally competent force. This is particularly true of the years 1996 to 2000—the period of the 9th Five-Year Plan. The PLA’s new concepts of operations—its new and evolving war fighting doctrines—are an absolutely critical component of this overall process.
 
In June 1999, the PLA took a major step toward doctrinal reform. At that time a very substantial body of directives providing new authoritative operational guidance to the PLA at the campaign (zhanyi; 战役) and tactical (zhanshu; 战术) levels of warfare were issued under the authority of the Central Military Commission (CMC). As a result, the “First Generation Operations Regulations” dating from the mid-1980s were retired, and a large corpus of materials—known collectively as the “New Generation Operations Regulations” (xin yidai zuozhan tiaoling; 新一代作战条令)—have been put in place.
 
At our July 1999 conference, this author provided some initial commentary about the state of understanding in our field about Chinese doctrine. At the time, the article raised more questions than could be answered.2 Much has transpired in this area of research and study since that conference. This essay will offer some modest new thoughts about the importance of the PLA’s new operational guidance, provide some context for where it fits into the larger PLA reform process, and share various other musings about attempting to study the operational art as it is evolving in today’s PLA.
 
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