According to cancermatters.net, the People’s Liberation Army is the military wing of the CPC and is under the control of the central military commission. It branches into headquarters, regional commands, special garrisons for special administrative regions, and academies for strategic studies and engineering training. According to Transparency International, China is one of the least transparent countries in this area. The defense budget of the PRC is second only to that of the United States and is growing every year at a rate of over 10%. Since the beginning, two visions have faced each other for the management of the army: one in favor of political formation, that is, the Maoist and predominant one, and another marked by the professionalization of the troops. In 2015, a ‘White Paper’ was published on the diversified use of China’s armed forces; in addition, Xi Jinping announced the reduction of 300,000 military personnel. Formally, the cardinal principles of Chinese defense have remained the same since the 1950s: safeguarding the territorial integrity of the country, in compliance with the right of each people to freely self-determine, and ensuring a peaceful environment for socio-economic development.. The document also mentions the existing dangers for China and starts from the Pacific-Asiatic area, in which Beijing has most of its disputes open. The cyclical announcements of rising Chinese military spending are greeted with concern by other powers in the area. However, the gaps to be filled are not few: the need to modernize equipment and structures; the difficulties in managing the companies responsible for the development of safety; the lack of incisiveness of the the difficulties in managing the companies responsible for the development of safety; the lack of incisiveness of the the difficulties in managing the companies responsible for the development of safety; the lack of incisiveness of the Chinese soft power in Southeast Asia. The scope of the threats felt by the Chinese mainly concerns access to resources.
China is very active in the so-called land grabbing: in 2013 it signed a fifty-year contract with Ukraine for the exploitation of high quality agricultural land. Diplomatic isolation, another recurring problem in PRC history, still clashes with the desire to gain prestige, a long-term goal that has prompted the Chinese to contribute in an ‘anti-imperialist’ sense to international decisions regarding Libya, Syria and Iran.
The concept of non-interference has also been taken to extremes due to disputes in the South China Sea with Brunei, South Korea, the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. The disputes with Japan over the possession of the Diaoyu Islands (Senkaku) have kept the tension high in the area: in November 2013, China established an aerial identification zone over the disputed area that is intertwined with the corresponding Japanese area established in 1965. Also for this reason, in recent years, the fleet has been the subject of particular investments and the inauguration of the Liaoning aircraft carrier, the first in China, was greeted with enthusiasm. The Chinese military growth, despite the difficulties of economic management, has increased the arms market.
Today China is the third largest arms exporter in the world with a growth of 143% between the periods 2005-2009 and 2010-2014. In September 2013, China won the tender to build Turkey’s missile shield, a $ 4 billion deal, and announced future aviation business proposals. Opposition to any form of interventionism clarifies Beijing’s idea of inland areas populated by different ethnic groups.
Tibet, effectively independent from 1912 to 1950 thanks to the mediation of the United Kingdom, is an autonomous region. The Tibetans, however, claim full independence from Beijing. Since the 2008 Olympics, cases of self-immolation of dissidents have multiplied, to which the CPC has reacted by restricting access to the region and increasing control. The autonomous Uyghur region of Xinjiang is inhabited by populations of Turkish origin, of which the Uighurs form the majority, and has been the scene of even violent independence claims since 2009, attributed to the Islamic Movement for East Turkestan. After the summer of 2013, characterized by a large number of arrests, in November of the same year a car exploded in Tiananmen Square shortly before the plenum. According to the Chinese authorities, it was a terrorist attack linked to Uyghur independence groups. In addition to this episode, they were attributed the 30 dead and 143 injured at the Kunming railway station (March 2014). Xi Jinping announced the hard line of the state in response.
