09/20/07
DEFENSE NEWS
China Military Conference Set to Begin at Carlisle Barracks
By WENDELL MINNICK
TAIPEI — The 18th annual People’s Liberation Army Conference, considered the premier academic and government conference on China’s army, will run Sept. 28-30 at the Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.
The theme for this year’s invitation-only conference is “The ‘People’ in the PLA: Recruitment, Training, and Education in China’s 80-year old Military.” More than 50 academics and specialists will examine trends and developments in recruitment, training, personnel management and education.
Co-hosted by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, it is “one of the only conferences where the government lets their people [intelligence analysts] attend,” a regular attendee said. Previous conference themes include how the PLA shapes the global security environment and trends driving PLA force modernization.
The papers are published a year later. The 2006 conference book, the ninth, edited by Roy Kamphausen and Andrew Scobell, “Right Sizing the People’s Liberation Army: Exploring the Contours of China’s Military,” has just been released by the Strategic Studies Institute and is available online.
