China Army Denies Being Behind Political Shake-up

A representative of the People’s Liberation Army declared Saturday that the army wholeheartedly supports Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and denied that it inspired the recent changes in China’s political leadership.

In a rare press conference, Xu Xin, the army’s deputy chief of general staff, termed “groundless” the allegation that the military played a key role in the ouster of former Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang or the current campaign against “bourgeois liberalization.”

Xu also said that military leaders “will try our best” to manage with the limited defense budget made available to them. An austerity budget for China released last week includes a cutback of 170 million yuan ($46 million) in investment for military projects this year.

Xu’s remarks were made to reporters covering the annual session of the National People’s Congress, China’s Parliament. It was the first time in many years that a spokesman for the army, believed to be the world’s largest, has held a press conference during a session of the congress.

Support for Deng

The thrust of Xu’s remarks was to underscore the army’s support for Deng, who holds the two leading posts of chairman of the Communist Party’s Military Commission and chairman of the government’s Central Military Commission.

“The present chairman of the Military Commission . . . has been supported by the people all over China and by the rank and file of the PLA,” Xu said. He added that the armed forces “have never interfered with the affairs of the party and government.”

Hu, the former Communist Party secretary and Deng’s longtime ally, resigned in January in the wake of a series of student demonstrations and a nationwide meeting of the Central Military Commission.

Deng, 82, has been talking for years of his desire to retire. Many analysts believe that Deng has tried over the past few years to install Hu to succeed him as head of the party’s Military Commission but that military leaders have refused to go along with the idea.

The Communist Party will hold a national congress next fall, and Deng has continued to hold out the possibility that he will step down then. Xu’s comments at the press conference may be interpreted as an effort to persuade Deng to stay.

During the press conference, Xu reaffirmed earlier assertions that the army has basically completed the task begun in 1985 of demobilizing 1 million soldiers.

But he refused to give specific figures on China’s present troop strength. Before the demobilization began, China had used estimates of between 3.5 million and 4 million for the size of the PLA.

All ranks were abolished within the army during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Chinese military leaders have been saying for several years that they planned to reintroduce ranks into the army.

“We will certainly introduce ranks into the PLA,” Xu said Saturday, but he gave no specific date. “Since the PLA is a big army, introducing ranks takes a lot of time and painstaking work,” he said.

Xu said the army is planning major, nationwide celebrations this summer, shortly before the Communist Party Congress, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Red Army on Aug. 1, 1927.