China’s military hard-liners had a wish-list for today’s summit in Washington. Here’s what they wanted.

If you look to the photo-ops of Chinese President Xi and Barack Obama, you won’t see any generals by Xi’s side. But China’s military leaders played a major role in drafting the script President Xi is following as he visits Washington, D.C. this week.

A few weeks ago in Beijing, many of the officers and what I call “scholar generals” predicted with pride what Xi would do during the summit—and what he had agreed not to do—predictions that they shared with me personally. The People’s Liberation Army has a little-known foreign policy team known as the General Political Department that assesses policy opportunities and often conflicts with the more wooly-headed intellectuals in the Foreign Ministry who resemble diplomats everywhere.

My recent book is controversial because I ignored China’s moderates and diplomats. My sources were instead interviews with 34 Chinese “scholar-generals” who have published books and articles about Chinese strategy. Twenty of these generals worked for their entire careers at the prestigious Academy of Military Science in a forbidden zone fifteen miles west of Beijing. They and officers at the National Defense University have invited me to their seminars and conferences on strategy since 1995.

Source: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/09/how-chinas-generals-already-gamed-xis-meeting-obama/121904/