Review: Party on the Bridge: Political Commissars in the Chinese Navy

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:

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.