PLA National Defence University

The current president of the university is People's Liberation Army (PLA) general Xiao Tianliang. Its current political commissar is vice admiral Xia Zhihe.

• Name — PLA National Defense University • Native Name — 中国人民解放军国防大学 • Former Names — Counter-Japanese Military and Political University • Motto — 团结、紧张、严肃、活泼 • Motto Eng — Togetherness, Alertness, Seriousness, Liveliness • Established — (predecessor) (current entity) • Founders — Deng Xiaoping • Type — Public military university • President — Xiao Tianliang • Vice President — Xia Zhihe (political commissar) • City — Beijing • Country — China • Affiliations — China • Illustration — Main Gate of PLA National Defense University • Illustration — Teaching Building of PLA National Defense University • Illustration — The Women's Military Band of the PLA National Defense University during the arrival of General Martin E. Dempsey at the NDU, April 2013.

The National Defense University originated from the Chinese Red Army teaching team founded by Mao Zedong in Jinggang Mountains in 1927. In December 1985, by a military order signed by Deng Xiaoping, then chairman of the Central Military Commission, the National Defense University was established by merging the People's Liberation Army's Military Academy, the Political Academy, and the Logistics Academy. In 2017, a textbook published by the PLA National Defense University called the Science of Military Strategy debuted the potential for biological warfare to include "specific ethnic genetic attacks." In July 2017, under the chairmanship of Xi Jinping, according to the order of the Central Military Commission, the former National Defense University, the Nanjing Institute of Political Science, the Xi'an Institute of Political Science, the PLA Academy of Art, the PLA Logistics Academy, the Shijiazhuang Ground Force Command Academy, the Armed Police Academy of Political Science, and some departments of the Equipment Academy merged to form the new National Defense University.

The university hosted visitors from Singapore and Australia as well as partnered with foreign firms such as Synopsys for technology transfer arrangements. In 2015, the People's Liberation Army National Defense University formed a think tank called the China National Security Studies Centre.

Planners at National Defense University project China's space military actions in space as retaliatory or preventative, following conditions like an attack on a Chinese satellite, an attack on China, or the interruption of a PLA amphibious landing. According to this approach, PLA planners assume that the country must have the capacity for retaliation and second-strike capability against a powerful opponent. PLA planners envision a limited space war and therefore seek to identify weak but critical nodes in other space systems.