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charge of national defence budget.131
Observers find out that the MoND’s responsibility is confined to external communication of Chinese military with other countries. 132As a result, the Ministry of National Defence seems quite dispensable.
B. Accountability of the CMC and the Military Accountability of the CMC
The Central Military Commission undertakes the command of the armed forces, whereas it suffers from a lack of political accountability.
In spite of the fact that the personnel in the CMC is elected by the National People’s Congress (NPC), the CMC as a whole has no accountability to the parliament, but only “[t]he Chairman of the Central Military Commission is responsible to the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee”, according to the Article 94. Additionally, the Article 93 reads that “[t]he Chairman assumes overall responsibility for the work of the Central Military Commission.” This means a concentration of responsibility to the Chairman, as one Chinese authority on constitutional law comments:
“The Constitution stipulates that the Chairman of the CMC is responsible to the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee, rather than the CMC. This illustrates that, compared with state organs such as the State Council, the Supreme People’s Court, and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and so on, the degree of concentration and personal responsibility is higher, and the responsibility of the CMC Chairman is more highlighted and emphasized.”
The government’s responsibility to the parliament grows from British constitutional convention. The “responsibility” in a constitutional sense means at least in two ways: (1) the ex-ante control by the parliament, and (2)
2018).
131 財政部：2017 年中國國防支出預算約 1 萬億元增長 7%,
http://www.mof.gov.cn/zhengwuxinxi/caijingshidian/xinhuanet/201703/t20170307_2547990.html (last visited, July 10, 2018).
132 田思源，同註 25，頁 17。David Shambaugh, MODERNIZING CHINA’S MILITARY: PROGRESS, PROBLEMS, AND PROSPECTS 124-126 (2003).
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accountability. Accountability is the narrow sense of the legal term
“responsibility”, which is composed of two meanings: the “explanatory accountability” and “amendatory (or remedial) accountability”. Explanatory accountability means “an obligation to give account – to answer, disclose, explain or justify”. Amendatory accountability means “the obligation to account for action or inaction – to ‘answer for’ whatever has been revealed of error or misgovernment, and correct or make due reparation for it.” Besides, only the amendatory accountability “is meant in phrases such as ‘held accountable for’, with its connotations of blame and penalty.”
However, the responsibility of the Chairman is limited, because the Chairman of the CMC needn’t report on its work to the parliament, compared to the executive – legislative relation. The Article 92 stipulates that “[t]he State Council is responsible and reports on its work to the National People's Congress or, when the National People's Congress is not in session, to its Standing Committee.” To the contrary, the Constitution only stipulates that the CMC Chairman has responsibility to the legislature, but doesn’t mention “reports on its work” to the NPC or NPCSC. So Article 93 implies that the CMC Chairman has no obligation to report. The Constitutional Revision Committee once explained that “because military action involves confidential matters of the state, it’s inappropriate to report.” This means that the Chairman of the CMC is largely deprived of the obligation of explanatory accountability.
On the other hand, the legislature can constitutionally supervise the work of the CMC. The Article 67 (6) stipulates that the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) shall “supervise the work of ……the Central Military Commission…….” But how to conduct supervision is also a question, since the parliament members have no right to inquire the CMC. This conclusion can also be reached compared to the constitutional norms over the State Council. The Article 67 (6) stipulates that the NPCSC shall supervise the central government as well, which is entangled with parliamentary inquiries
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into the governmental affairs. According to Article 73, the State Council, along with its ministries and commissions, has the obligation to answer the inquiries addressed by the deputies to the NPC and the members of the SCNPC.
Surprisingly, the Constitution doesn’t mention the inquiries to the CMC and its Chairman. This implies that the CMC are not legally obliged to answer to the parliamentary inquiries, which leads to the dysfunction of legislative supervision, as well as the impairment of the amendatory accountability of the CMC Chairman.
As a result, an interpretation of the constitutional text reveals that the responsibility of the Chairman is confined to limited accountability to the legislatures. And it’s not easy for the legislature to supervise the military action decided by the CMC.
The Pressure of Civilian Control: CMC Chairman Responsibility System
The PLA suffers a paucity of effective civilian control system. Since the executive has no say in military affairs, the degree of civilian control over the military is up to the capacity of the CMC Chairman. Although this office isn’t limited to a civilian, but a convention in the party indicates that the CMC Chairman shall be the civilian leader of the Party.
The CMC Chairman has the ultimate decision-making power over military affairs. CMC Chairman responsibility system has been set up in the Constitution: “The Chairman assumes overall responsibility for the work of the Central Military Commission.” (Art. 93 II) This is the only rule that the civilians can rely on to maintain civilian control of military. But this system doesn’t run so smoothly after Deng Xiaoping, since his civilian successors have no military experience.133 Faced with professional soldiers, the CMC Chairman confronts asymmetry of information. When the Vice Chairmen or other generals in key
133 Chien-wen Kou, Xin Jinping in Command: Solving the Principal-Agent Problem in CCP-PLA Relations?, 232 THE CHINA QUARTERLY 866, 867-868 (2017).