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ITOW: Legal Warfare

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Translations from Chinese source documents

The “In Their Own Words” series is dedicated to translations of Chinese documents in order to help non-Mandarin speaking audiences access and understand Chinese thinking. 

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Legal Warfare

100 Cases - Classic Case Analysis

The newly promulgated “Regulations on the Political Work of the Chinese People's Liberation Army” clearly put forward the tasks of public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare, which are referred to as the “three wars.” Taking legal warfare as a part of our army's political work is a major innovation and development in comprehensively strengthening army building and making good preparations for military struggles in the new century and new stage. At present, the whole army is seriously studying the issue of the “three wars.” As far as the “three wars” themselves are concerned, public opinion warfare and psychological warfare are also our military's glorious traditions and successful experiences in defeating the enemy, but with the emergence of social development and high-tech warfare, there have been new developments and changes in the contents, means, and methods of realizing public opinion warfare and psychological warfare. However, legal warfare is a new formulation in our military's regulations, and we need to conscientiously grasp and ponder the definition, connotation, tasks, and “combat methods” of legal warfare.

Although “legal warfare” is a new proposal of the political work regulations, judging from its main contents, basic requirements, and forms of expression, whether it is in the military, commerce, culture, and other fields of social life, it has already existed. There have also been many “legal battles” in the history of our army, but they have not explicitly stated that they are legal wars. In fact, any war in modern or modern times, whether it mentions legal warfare or not, is accompanied by a struggle and contest of laws. In particular, in modern and modern warfare, the application of relevant laws has been placed in an important position. Including war decision-makers and the specific implementers and executors of various acts of war, all of which are inseparable from the constraints of relevant laws. Historically, we can find a large number of cases in which legal battles have been used in conjunction with military operations. In particular, in the current process of preparing for military struggles, the issue of the application of the law has become an issue of great concern to the Central Military Commission and the heads of the PLA General Departments. It can be seen that taking the “three wars,” especially legal warfare, as an important part of political work is a new requirement for our army's wartime political work in the new century and new stage, and is of great significance for making good preparations for military struggles and ensuring victory in a just war.

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