In the theater of international relations, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long masterheaded a narrative of being the ultimate bulwark against fascism and militarism. A staple of Beijing’s wolf-warrior diplomacy and domestic propaganda is accusing its democratic neighbors of allowing the "ghost of militarism to return." However, in political psychology, there exists a classic phenomenon known as psychological projection: the specific sins a regime most aggressively projects onto its adversaries are almost always the exact blueprints of its own internal reality.
When you peel back the ideological veneer of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and perform a penetrative verification of its foundational and modern legislative records, a chilling geopolitical reality emerges. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is currently the most heavily organized Leninist-Militarist state on Earth. Its self-proclaimed "People’s Democratic Dictatorship" is, in structural reality, a highly mutated, technologically upgraded reincarnation of pre-WWII Japanese militarism.
I. The Original Sin: 1949 and the Foundations of Uniformed Governance
The militaristic nature of the PRC is not a Western conceptual invention; it is a matter of historical record documented by the CCP itself.
According to the September 1949 coverage by the People’s Daily (the central organ of the CCP), reporting on the first plenary session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)—the very body that established the foundational architecture of the state—the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) held a staggering, independent voting bloc of 71 delegates. This included 14 high-ranking commanders from the PLA Headquarters, such as Zhu De and Nie Rongzhen, alongside field army commanders like He Long.
During this foundational assembly, the address delivered by He Long, the chief delegate of the PLA First Field Army, shattered the universal, civilized norm of civilian control over the military. He Long openly declared to the assembly:
"...We have already fought our way close to the borders of Xinjiang and Sichuan! We guarantee to this grand assembly: ...if the remnants of the enemy dare to continue resisting, we will resolutely, thoroughly, cleanly, and completely annihilate them."
"...The Northwest is a vast land, rich in mineral resources and diverse in ethnicities... We guarantee to this assembly: our First Field Army possesses not only the resolve to rapidly complete the glorious task of liberating the entire Northwest, but will also... strive to develop the Northwest."人民日报报道：PLA第一野战军首席代表贺龙在政协第一届全体会议发言：“...我们现在已经打到接近新疆和四川的边境去了！我们向大会保证：...残留西北西南战场的敌人，如果他们不投降或不接受八条二十四款和平解决的方案，胆敢继续抵抗，我们就一定坚决、彻底、干净、全部消灭之”https://t.co/Q5AHcSaWGc
— CPA Jim (@CPAJim2021) May 7, 20261949年9月PLA第一野战军代表贺龙在政协会议上发言：“...我们向大会保证：我们一定迅速完成解放全西北并协同兄弟部队解放全西南的任务... 西北，是一个土地广大、矿藏丰富、民族众多的地方，...我们向大会保证：我第一野战军全体指战员除有决心迅速完成全部解放西北的光荣任务外，并...努力开发西北..."
— CPA Jim (@CPAJim2021) May 7, 2026
In any legitimate constitutional or democratic state, the military functions as a defensive instrument subordinate to a civilian administration. It does not act as an independent political corporate entity capable of issuing sovereign guarantees or mapping out postwar territorial acquisition. He Long’s speech laid bare the DNA of the regime: from day one, the military was not just an instrument of state defense; it was an autonomous political faction that claimed direct monopoly over postwar territorial administration, resource extraction, and economic development. This is the classic definition of a militarist junta wrapped in a party shell.
II. The Dual-Track Legislature: The Unbroken Institutionalization of the "Gun"
This militaristic blueprint was seamlessly transferred from the 1949 CPPCC to the 1954 First National People’s Congress (NPC), and it remains deeply embedded within the regime’s legislative cells today.
In a normal constitutional state, any active-duty military officer wishing to enter politics must first retire from active service and run as a civilian. In the PRC's NPC, however, the legislative body has permanently institutionalized a unique "cross-infiltration" model. According to official data compiled by the PRC Ministry of National Defense, the military’s control over the legislature operates through a dual mechanism: a dedicated, vertical PLA Delegation, supplemented by an omnipotent, horizontal "parasitic" presence within civilian provincial delegations.
The Parasitic Roster: Case of the 2nd NPC Sichuan Delegation While the official record states that the PLA delegation for the 1st and 2nd NPCs was nominally limited to 60 members, this was a deliberate statistical camouflage. The Ministry of National Defense openly admits that numerous top generals were hidden inside civilian provincial delegations.
A penetrative audit of the 2nd NPC Sichuan Provincial Delegation reveals that this single civilian delegation was covertly packed with a staggering military junta: two Field Marshals (Zhu De, Nie Rongzhen), one Senior General (Luo Ruiqing), two Generals, and two Lieutenant Generals.
This means that beneath the guise of regional civilian representation sat a fully functional regional military command theater. Similarly, during the 1st NPC, prominent Marshals and Generals were distributed across civilian blocs—Chen Yi in Shanghai, Luo Ruiqing in Hebei, Yang Chengwu in Tianjin, and Wei Guoqing in Guangxi.
When the regime entered the chaotic military-junta rule of the Cultural Revolution, this camouflage was discarded entirely: the number of military seats spiked violently from 120 in the 3rd NPC to 486 in the 4th NPC, and peaked at 503 seats in the 5th NPC, reflecting a total military takeover of the state machinery.
In the contemporary era, this dual-track apparatus has consolidated into a massive, monolithic institution. According to the official roster for the 14th National People's Congress (2023–2028), the PLA and People’s Armed Police (PAP) delegation holds an overt bloc of 281 seats, making it the single largest unified interest group in the legislature.
The modern instantiation of this is terrifyingly expansive. According to the official roster published for the 14th National People's Congress, the PLA and People’s Armed Police (PAP) delegation holds a massive, monolithic bloc of 281 seats. This makes the military the single largest unified interest group within the nominal legislature.
The structural reality of this was put on full display during the opening days of the 14th NPC’s Session. On March 3, General Zhang Shengmin, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and head of the PLA-PAP legislative delegation, explicitly instructed the military delegates to elevate their political stance and "vigorously push to transform the Party's propositions into state will and national action." A few days later, on March 7—well before the Supreme People’s Court reports were even voted on—Xi Jinping personally attended the plenary session of this uniformed military delegation to align strategic objectives.
In Western political logic, the "state will" represents the collective consensus of the electorate achieved through civilian debate. In Beijing’s Leninist-Militarist model, the "state will" is merely the dictates of the Party, weaponized and legalized through a permanent, institutionalized legislative bloc of 281 uniformed commanders. The state does not own an army; the army owns a state.
III. The Spoils of Militarism: General Wang Wenquan and the Modern War Machine
A militarist state cannot survive purely on ideological coercion; it requires a highly sophisticated internal mechanism of rewards, emergency mobilization, and institutional incentives for its warrior caste. The rapid, unconventional ascent of General Wang Wenquan provides a perfect textbook case of this modern military-spoils system.
During the 13th NPC, Wang Wenquan—then serving as the Political Commissar of the 72nd Group Army—openly proposed from the legislative floor that the state must overhaul its military compensation structures to "heavily favor and tilt resources toward those executing direct combat, live-fire drills, and major non-war military operations, treating with absolute generosity those with merit in war-preparedness and training." This is the unvarnished logic of a militarist regime: using the legislative machinery of the state to legally siphon the wealth of civilian taxpayers directly into the pockets of the military caste to incentivize aggressive posture.
Wang’s subsequent promotion reveals the deeper, darker mechanics of the regime's emergency and bio-defense infrastructure. Despite holding only the rank of Lieutenant General, Wang was leapfrogged by Xi Jinping into the powerful Central Committee and handed the reins of the Joint Logistics Support Force of the CMC.
The Joint Logistics Support Force is effectively the "Emergency Management Department" of the military—the nerve center for strategic supply, bio-defense, and rapid response. Wang’s primary political asset for this massive promotion was his role as a key orchestrator in an event that featured highly sensitive bio-defense drills and emergency response deployments right before the global outbreak of COVID-19. Because his performance in handling these high-stakes, opaque military-emergency operations was deemed "excellent" by the core leadership, he was rewarded with the keys to the regime’s most critical logistical and mobilization apparatus.
IV. Conclusion: The Ultimate Geopolitical Projection
When the CCP’s propaganda apparatus relentlessly warns the world about the threat of foreign militarism, it is performing a highly sophisticated geopolitical smoke screen. By forcing the world to focus on historical ghosts elsewhere, Beijing successfully masks the heavily armed leviathan operating right before our eyes.
The line running from He Long’s 1949 declaration of territorial dominance to General Zhang Shengmin’s 2026 directive to enforce "the Party’s will as state law" is completely unbroken. It is reinforced by an institutional framework where 281 uniformed generals vote on national laws, and where figures like Wang Wenquan are elevated based on their execution of shadowy emergency military maneuvers.
The Western international relations apparatus has long recognized this behavior pattern. It is the reason why the strategic architecture of the "First Island Chain"—originally erected by democratic maritime powers to contain the expansionism of Imperial Tokyo—was able to seamlessly pivot to containing Beijing. The West understood that the ideological label had changed, but the structural threat remained identical: a continental power utilizing a completely regimented society, powered by a Leninist party apparatus, and driven by an absolute militarist core. The ghost has not returned in Tokyo; it has simply found a new, far more dangerous vessel in Beijing.
V. The Civil-Military Divergence: Philadelphia vs. Beijing
To fully grasp the anomalous nature of the PRC's militarist structure, one must contrast its leadership with the founding architects of the United States. The ideological and structural divergence between the American Founding Fathers and the CCP's military junta represents two opposite paths of civilization.
The American Revolutionary leaders were, at their core, civilians—lawyers, merchants, scientists, and planters. Men like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin approached governance through the lens of constitutional law and social contract. When George Washington, the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, won the Revolutionary War in 1783, he performed an act that stunned the monarchies of Europe: he voluntarily resigned his military commission to the civilian Continental Congress and returned to his farm. This established the sacred Western tenet of civilian control over the military. The uniform was an instrument for securing liberty, not a license to rule.
The CCP’s leadership path was the precise inversion. Generals like He Long, Zhu De, and Lin Biao were career warlords and ideologues forged by decades of absolute internal warfare. Upon achieving victory in 1949, they did not dissolve their military commands; they weaponized their field armies into permanent, parasitic legislative blocs within the civilian state apparatus.
While Washington chose the path of Cincinnatus—returning power to civilian hands—the CCP leadership chose to institutionalize the "gun" within the state's DNA. This is why, while American constitutionalism successfully shackled military power under civilian congressional oversight, the Chinese Leninist model evolved into a mechanism where, as evidenced in the 2026 NPC sessions, 281 uniformed commanders dictate national laws under the auspices of a militarized vanguard. The American Founders built a nation defined by law; the CCP built a military fortress disguised as a republic.
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