Analyzing the Chinese Military: A Review Essay and Resource Guide on the People’s Liberation Army

This monograph reviews recent books on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to help the generalist or student become familiar with existing evaluations and identify best practices for assessing Chinese military affairs. The structure is deliberately designed to help readers build a solid foundation for understanding the PLA and develop a progressively more sophisticated perspective. Ten appendixes provide additional resources including an extensive bibliography on PLA and Chinese security affairs as well as short guides on where to find regular PLA-related analysis, what Chinese-language sources to acquire, and whose analysis to follow.

Peter Mattis is a Fellow in the China Program at The Jamestown Foundation, where he served as editor of the foundation's China Brief, a biweekly electronic journal on greater China, from 2011 to 2013. He regularly contributes to The National Interest and China Brief, and his writing also has appeared in the Taipei Times, the East-West Center's Asia-Pacific Bulletin, The Diplomat, War on the Rocks, the Asia Society's ChinaFile, the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Studies in Intelligence, and the Washington Journal of Modern China. His views have appeared in Defense News, Christian Science Monitor, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Sydney Morning Herald, UPI, BBC, and National Public Radio. He also has delivered lectures on China at Georgetown University, George Washington University, University of Cambridge, and the National Cheng-chi University (Taiwan).