PLA role expanding, civil-military fusion policy being seen in China: Expert

China has a history of bringing army into politics and a civil-military fusion policy is being seen in that country with the PLA's role expanding, a senior fellow for China studies at the American Foreign Policy Council said on Thursday.

China has a history of bringing army into politics and a civil-military fusion policy is being seen in that country with the PLA's role expanding, a senior fellow for China studies at the American Foreign Policy Council said on Thursday. At a webinar organized by the US Embassy in India, Joshua Eisenman, associate professor of global affairs at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, said China is not just a "party-state but a party-army state".

"Bringing the army into politics is something that has a history in China, it is not new. What is going on now is really interesting -- the civil military fusion policy which is essentially making it difficult to distinguish between the army and the rest," he said at the webinar titled 'Chinese Influence in the Indo-Pacific'. There is a policy now that is pushing "the army and the civil together", Eisenman said.

"You have got this military (leadership), civil leadership in Xi Jinping, and then you have got the security... and the lines are blurring," he said. He said that with the deployment of the People's Liberation Army on the India border, the South China Sea and elsewhere, its role is expanding.

He said China was now more of a right-wing state and not a leftist state. "No matter how politically powerful the PLA gets or someone else gets, the future of China will happen under the banner of the Communist Party of China because there is brand loyalty built in that banner," he said. His remarks come at a time when at a time when China and India are engaged in a border dispute.