The People's Liberation Army Daily, or PLA Daily for short, is the official newspaper of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Institutionally, the PLA Daily is the mouthpiece of and speaks for the General Political Department of the PLA, and in that capacity speaks on the part of the PLA itself. Its editorial line hews closely to that found in the Chinese Communist Party's own official newspaper, People's Daily. The paper generally covers news stories relating to the PLA and other military affairs, while projecting the voice of the military into the public policy realm for primarily domestic consumption. In August 2010, an editorial suggested that Chinese military strategy was out of date, and that China must "audaciously learn from the experience of the information cultures of foreign militaries", along with modernization and open procurement. The PLA Daily, while officially serving as the voice of the military, does not stray far from the Party's own messaging when it comes to foreign policy. "There is a strong correlation between foreign policy rhetoric in the—CCP’s civilian voice—the People’s Daily—and its military voice—the PLA Daily," writes scholar of strategy Alastair Iain Johnston. The appearances of the pet policy initiatives of Chinese leaders in the pages of PLA Daily are often taken by scholars as an expression of those leaders' strength in the military. Scholars with the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College cites the vast number of appearances of propaganda related to the "scientific development concept"—promulgated by Party leader Hu Jintao—as evidence that Hu's "influence on certain areas of the PLA's development since 2004 has been substantial."
History
The PLA Daily was established on January 1, 1956, under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Military Commission, and directly controlled by the GDP. During the Cultural Revolution, the publications chief editor was purged in a political struggle, army commander Lin Biao—at the time Mao Zedong's close comrade—was put in charge of the leadership of the publication. The most important editorials of the newspaper were jointly published by People's Daily and Red Flag, from 1967 to 1978, so called "Two newspapers and one journal", directly representing the highest voice of Chinese Communist Party.
