Reader Quanticle has reviewed a recent report, Party on the Bridge, about Chinese naval command, and I asked him if I could repost his writeup here, as I thought it would be of significant interest.
American naval captains, like their British forebears, command a great deal of authority. In the US Navy, a captain is wholly and entirely responsible for maintaining the safety of their vessel, its crew, and accomplishing the missions that they are assigned. They have sole command of all aspects of their ship's operation, from watch rotations to weapons employment. This tradition of sole command is so inculcated into Anglo-American naval traditions that it is difficult for us to imagine any other way of running a navy ship. The Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), however, offers an alternative system. Instead of being commanded by individuals, as US and UK naval vessels are, PLAN vessels have a dual command system, where a captain and a political officer assume joint responsibility for major decisions. In their report, Party on the Bridge: Political Commissars in the Chinese Navy, Jeff Benson and Zi Yang look at this very different system of commanding a naval vessel, examine its strengths and weaknesses and highlight how it may lead to misunderstandings when US and Chinese naval units encounter each other at sea.
The Chinese military has a long history of embedding the Communist Party into its military at all levels. The first party committees in the military were established during the Sanwan Conference of 1927, when Mao Zedong created party committees at the battalion and regiment level in order to maintain unit morale and prevent retreating units from losing cohesion. In 1929 at the Gutian Conference, the role of these committees was expanded significantly, with Chairman Mao calling upon party committees in the military to take a central role in building up the party and ensuring that both the military and the people were indoctrinated with the values of Communism. Since then, the Chinese Communist Party has maintained party committees in every branch and at all levels of the military.
On PLAN vessels, party committees consist of 5-6 people:
- Commanding military officer
- Senior political officer
- Deputy political officer
- Executive officers in charge of operations and logistics
Although the party committee has formal command of the unit, command authority is delegated jointly to the commanding military officer and senior political officer. Each is theoretically able to assume sole responsibility in case the other is incapacitated or unavailable. However, in the committee, the military commander is subordinate to the political officer, who serves as the chairman. All "major issues" must be approved by the committee as a whole, with a vote taken on the matter. However, there is little public guidance on what constitutes a major issue, or what happens if there is disagreement on whether a vote should be taken.
During routine operations, the political officer and military commander serve complementary roles, with the political officer taking primary responsibility for readiness and morale much like the executive officer or the chief enlisted officer aboard a US Navy vessel. However, during combat operations, the political officer is expected to stand ready to advise the captain and remind them of the Party's primary objectives in the current situation. This is illustrated by a scene in a PLAN-funded film, Operation Red Sea, where a military commander is torn between the competing priorities of ensuring the safety of his vessel, which is sheltering civilians, and aiding marines ashore. The political officer reminds the military commander that his primary responsibility is to his ship and the civilians it carries, prompting him to move his vessel offshore and use a drone to aid the troops left behind. Although the political officer made no command decisions, he stood side by side with the captain and ensured that the captain prioritized competing objectives correctly.
Further cementing the influence of the political officer is the fact that the PLAN does not have a centralized promotion board. Instead promotions are handled by the party committees, with higher level unit committees deciding which officers deserve promotions based on feedback from lower level committees. A key part of this feedback is the observations and evaluation of the political officer. The fact that the political officer may make or break a military commander's chances for promotion incentivizes military commanders to work closely with political officers and ensure that they're involved in all major unit decisions.
An understudied aspect of the PLAN's dual command structure is what happens when there is miscommunication between the military commander and the political officer which results in them issuing conflicting orders. In the US Navy's single command system, crewmembers can always escalate questions about their assignment up the chain of command, and there is a single ultimate decisionmaking authority, the captain, who can adjudicate between conflicting priorities. In the PLAN's system, this decisionmaking authority is the party committee. During peacetime, this committee mediates between the military commander and the political officer, deciding matters with a majority vote. Usually, there is a significant degree of coordination and discussion ahead of time and the actual vote is a formality. However, during wartime, it is unknown how this committee system would operate. PLAN regulations do allow military commanders to take independent action to respond to emergencies, provided they submit to an "inspection" by the party committee after the emergency is over. However, it is not clear what constitutes an emergency situation, nor is it clear how the eventual obligation to submit to a formal inspection would affect the military commander's decision-making process during the emergency.
Another open question is how the political officer system interacts with the PLAN's nascent noncommissioned officer corps. In the US Navy, matters of crew management, morale, and readiness are often handled by noncommissioned officers. In the PLAN, many of these roles belong to political officers. Therefore, it is unclear what actual responsibilities noncommissioned officers have in the PLAN, and how they interact with political officers and the party committee system.
One tempting approach to answer these unknowns is to look to the Soviet Navy, which also had political officers aboard its ships. However, doing so is a mistake. Unlike the PLAN, for the majority of its history, the Soviet Navy was a single command system, where the political officer was subordinate, both in rank and authority, to the military commander. Another difference is that in the Soviet Navy, the political officer and military commander reported up separate chains of command. In the PLAN, both the political officer and military commander are formally subordinate to the party committee for the vessel, which, in turn, is subordinate to the party committee for the larger unit that the vessel is part of. Although Soviet vessels did have military councils, which superficially resemble Chinese party committees, the Soviet councils were collegial groupings of senior officers, and did not have any kind of command authority.
The radical difference in command structure between US and Chinese naval vessels increases the chances for inadvertent escalation during encounters between US and Chinese ships. US Navy captains, when communicating with Chinese military commanders, may believe that they are communicating with someone with a corresponding level of authority and ability to unilaterally implement agreed upon actions. However, the fact that major issues have to be decided by a vote of the party committee might result in Chinese military commanders appearing to dither, or even renege on agreements, as they have to submit their decision for approval by the party committee, which may override them. In the other direction, Chinese commanders may believe that US ships' actions are deliberately calculated to provoke, when, in reality they might be the result of an individual, fallible, captain making a mistake.
To reduce the risk of these misunderstandings, the US Navy should ensure that political officers are included in military-to-military contacts between the US Navy and the PLAN. US researchers should examine more Chinese-language primary sources to investigate the actual division of responsibilities between Chinese military commanders and political officers, and how that division of responsbility changes when a vessel transitions from a peacetime to a wartime enviroment. One way to do this would be to establish a formal office, in coordination with the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval War College, dedicated to studying Chinese command and control.
For someone familiar with Anglo-American military traditions, the PLAN is profoundly strange. Our chains of command are composed of people, starting with the President, and terminating in indvidual sailors, soldiers, airmen, etc. The PLAN's chain of command, by contrast, consists of committees, starting with the Central Military Committee, chaired by Xi Jinping himself, and terminating in unit party committees. While our military values individual initiative and mission command, the PLA values consensus, control and collective decision-making. These differences in worldview can lead to misunderstandings, and given the increasing tensions between the US and China in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean, misunderstandings can have catastrophic consequences. The US Navy should make additional efforts to study Chinese command structures, ensure that all appropriate officers are included in military to military contacts, regardless of their formal rank or role, and educate its own commanders on the structure of the PLAN. By doing so, we can minimize the chances of inadvertent escalation and ensure, if conflict is unavoidable, that our captains understand how their adversaries think.
Comments
If a war is viewed as existential the system would be modified as the Soviets did in The Great Patriotic War.
But for nuclear armed powers wars only the leaders are likely to feel any conflict not involving mushroom clouds is existential and in that case they're more scared of a coup than invasion.
That system isn't changing.
All throughout maritime history, both civil and military, the concept of unitary command of the ship at sea keeps cropping up, not just in the Royal Navy and its heirs.
Admiralty law recognizes the power (and responsibility) of civilian ship masters as The Small But Totipotent In Their Domain Gods of their ships, even over and above the harbor and canal pilots (except in, what, two cases?) They may delegate their power, but are still responsible for the use of that power.
I'm not even arguing that. I would fully expect that the system would change in 6 months to a year, even in a less-than-existential war, because people don't like losing. But I also expect that first few months to be decisive, and the US to win because this is absolutely a recipe for command paralysis.
Am I the only one to need to read it five times before i realized Jeff Benson wasn't a commissar?
The Chinese NCOs seem like they would end up as warrant officers or restricted duty NCOs? Experts in whatever their field is build institutional knowledge and capability, but not really officers in the same way that we have generalist NCOs and line officers.
With respect to how it works in combat, my guess is that tactical responses, especially defensive ones, end up being delegated. Even the Chinese understand that “activate the CIWS” has to be made immediately. But offensive strikes probably need at least some level of concurrence.
@redRover In warfare, the offensive/defensive distinction is not very helpful - you go on the defensive to survive so you can counter-attack, and you attack first so you don't have to deal with the consequences of an enemy attack later ("the best defense is a good offense"). If you have the chance right now to sink the enemy vessel before it can fire the missile that you would have to defend against with your CIWS, is that a defensive or an offensive action?
@EoC
If a chance shot presents itself (and doesn’t otherwise compromise the mission) they should of course take it.
But I think in general going on the offensive implies a certain amount of planning (and thus time to build consensus), at least as a high level. (And also somewhat concomitant with the scope of what is being done - committing your whole fleet to attack Pearl Harbor is different than deciding to start your search pattern north or south.)
I suppose some of it also depends on what the parameters are - “go east and shoot when we have a torpedo firing solution” is different than “we have a firing solution for the torpedoes, shall we fire?”
Chance shots like that are so rare as to be nonexistent, especially against a competent adversary. It's always a matter of probabilities. Do you take the chance shot, risking detection and retaliation if it misses or if the adversary's countermeasures defeat it, or do you wait for a better opportunity that may never arrive?
The US Navy leaves the ultimate responsibility for making that decision up to an individual, the captain. The PLAN puts the the ultimate responsibility on the Party Standing Committee. In theory, a military commander could declare an emergency, take the shot, and then face the consequences afterwards. But in practice, how many will do that, especially in a situation where their own vessel isn't in immediate danger?
My feeling is that this system will lead the PLAN to make the same mistakes that the French did in the age of fighting sail. They will encourage their captains to be overly conservative in combat, which will save the ships, but lose the war.
I have a book, "A History of the Modern Chinese Navy, 1840 - 2020" by B.A. Elleman. According to this, the Chinese Communists really don't trust their navy. In both the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and that of the Nationalists in 1949 the navy played a crucial role by defecting to the other side. Deng Zhaoxiang is a hero of the PLAN for leading the mutiny and defection of the cruiser Chongqing to the Communists in 1949 - an interesting choice of role model for the younger officers now that the Communists are in charge.
The CCCP do pay attention to history, and seem determined to make sure that it can't happen to them. As well as the micro level control on individual ships, the Chinese navy doesn't really have a chain of command at the higher levels either. There are four fleets, and the commander of each fleet reports to the nearest senior army commander, not to the head of the navy.
I wonder how they address it with the Air Force and pilots? The tactical decision making is even less amenable to decision by committee, both because of speed and because of the tiny crews involved.
However, for the overall mission taskings (where do we strike, when should we attack?) it seems like you could end up with a similar control structure and set of constraints.
@quanticle
I agree in principle, but I think the practical importance is somewhat mitigated by the rarity of 'risk free shots at the enemy'. Like, if a carrier accidentally drives over a submarine, sure, but otherwise it seems like the basic premise of peer warfare is "if I can take a shot at them, they can probably take a shot at me."
I think you have one too many 'C's in there. : )
Overall, though, I wholeheartedly agree. Xi Jinping has given many speeches discussing the fall of the Soviet Union. He sees the fall of the Soviet Union as a preventable tragedy caused, in part, but insufficient ideological party control over the institutions of the state. It may very well be that he views maintaining control over the military and security services as an even greater priority than winning a war for Taiwan.
It was kind of funny to me because I'm pretty sure I've been on email chains with Jeff Benson from when he was at DESRON 15.