A Look at the PLA's History of Planning for War with Taylor Fravel

How does China think about the nature of war? How has China’s conception of war changed over time? What are “military guidelines” in Chinese statecraft and what leads the Chinese leadership to develop new ones? These and other questions are discussed in the latest episode of Jaw-Jaw, where Professor Taylor Fravel discusses his recent book Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949.

Biographies

Taylor Fravel is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Taylor is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, and the China Quarterly, and is a member of the board of directors for the National Committee on U.S. - China Relations. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Maritime Awareness Project.

Brad Carson is a professor at the University of Virginia, where he teaches in the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001-2005 and was Undersecretary of the Army and acting Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel & Readiness in the Obama administration. He welcomes comments at brad.carson@warontherocks.com.

Links

• National Defense University, "Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA: Assessing Chinese Military Reforms," (2019)
• David Edelstein, "Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers," (Cornell University Press, 2017)
• Carl Minzner, "End of an Era: How China's Authoritarian Revival is Undermining Its Rise," (Oxford University Press, 2018)