Over the past 24 years, I have written multiple articles about the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) 15-grade structure, with an emphasis on how every organization, not just personnel, is assigned a grade. While reviewing the announcements from the recent 3rd Plenum, where the Minister of National Defense (MND), Admiral Dong Jun, was not promoted to the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), I wondered if there was an impact to MND itself. However, based on recent feedback from the Director of the USAF’s China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI), Dr. Brendan Mulvaney, it appears that my previous assessments that attributed the CMC Member grade to organizations was incorrect. As Dr. Mulvaney pointed out, there appear to be no CMC Member grade organizations, but rather only CMC Member grade individuals.
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