By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: Even the grim, dark and powerful Soviet Union came to share fairly detailed information about the size and potency of its military to ensure nobody made a wrong step by over- or underestimating its military prowess. The current rising power, China, so far, has largely refused to share much information about either how its forces are organized or what weapons it fields.
So when official Chinese media were joined by Western media in reporting that the Peoples Liberation Army had issued a White Paper, "Diversified Employment of China's Armed Forces," offering greater transparency, I checked with a range of experts on the PLA to see if that was, in fact, the case.
"There is really nothing that stands out as a remarkably new emphasis or form of 'transparency.' The identification of all PLA Army units as mobile forces with their military region affiliation is a better explanation of order of battle," said Larry Wortzel, one of Washington's most respected China military analysts and also a member of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, in an email.
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