Is China's Military Getting Antsy? The Chain of Command Question in Non-Democracies

This article scared me. My read of this piece is that the Chinese military leaders are talking tough and feeling cocky. In terms of labor and capital, they run an impressive army. With 1.3 billion people to choose from, the quantity and quality of the labor should be high and with trillions of dollars of government surplus the capital (tanks, planes) should all be impressive as well. When you build a great military machine, there are some Generals who are eager to use it.

You don't have to be a great theorist about organizations to know that the greatest opportunity for military leaders is during war time. Add in a little bit of nationalism over Taiwan and a few Asian islands in the South China Sea and the Smart Obama team could face years of headaches when it hoped that it would have an equal "partner" in China.

My big question: in a nation without a Constitution (and I'm assuming that China doesn't have a constitution), does the Chinese military actually believe in civilian rule? In the United States, our military appears to believe that President Obama is the commander in chief. Does the Chinese military look to Beijing for orders? If there is a conflict between the military and the Chinese central government, how is this mediated and resolved?