* Control of the military is crucial to whichever entity wishes to take charge of Chinese politics. Jiang Zemin has retained leadership of the military despite transitioning all others of his powers to Hu Jintao.
* China currently possesses the world�s largest standing army and is undertaking a massive modernization effort which is aimed at achieving regional sovereignty and keeping on par with the United States in terms of the magnitude, if not the sophistication, of its arsenal. China has frequently eyed Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province, and a precarious balance of power exists in the Pacific, wherein the only genuine barrier to the unleashing of Chinese military power is the United States 7th Fleet. The role the military will play in China�s affairs is to be ultimately determined by the country�s foreign relations.
* Although the fomentation of external crisis is of temporary political advantage to the ruling elite, the economic consequences of alienation from the West, in a nation where 42 million inhabitants are still below the poverty line, will be disastrous in the long term, as the populace will not likely support a Party that plunges it into economic disrepair.
*The military, nevertheless, is still employed to quell dissenters and radical reformers within China�s boundaries. It is among the forces dispatched to monitor �subversive activity� in the printed, visual, and electronic media, as well as to conduct physical repression activities. While the peak of this usage was during the Tiananmen Square Massacre, it continues to this day, and may be the party�s ticket toward preventing any mass upheaval that would dislodge it.
