The Tiananmen crackdown ignited a decade of debate on the Chinese military’s role, and where its loyalties should lie

In the nine decades since its founding, the People’s Liberation Army has served the Communist Party.

In other parts of the world such as the United States and Britain, the military is a national force, loyal to the state and the civilian administration of the day.

But in China, the PLA still operates under the principle that “the party controls the gun”.

Nevertheless, nationalisation has been supported at times by top members of the party, including late leader Mao Zedong.

Mao backed the idea of a neutral armed forces when the Kuomintang was still in power in China in the early 1940s. The KMT wrote the principle into the Republic of China’s constitution in 1946 and it remained so – in theory – after the KMT fled to Taiwan in 1949 following the civil war. But it was not until 2000, when the opposition’s Chen Shui-bian became the island’s president and Taiwan’s armed forces stayed in their barracks, that the military’s political neutrality was truly observed in practice.