"The Party commands the gun" (Chinese: 党指挥枪; pinyin: Dǎng zhǐhuī qiāng) is a policy and slogan of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to emphasize its absolute control of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). It was first used by CCP leader Mao Zedong in his 1938 article Problems of War and Strategy. The original text reads "Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and we will never allow the gun to command the Party."
Mao believed that the Chinese Communist Party could not achieve revolution through solely peaceful means. He also mentioned that during the First United Front with the Kuomintang, the CCP "ignored the struggle for the army and focused one-sidedly on the mass movement", and was eventually suppressed after the split with the Kuomintang. Mao then used the example of the Kuomintang's war history of controlling the army to illustrate that the CCP should "derive political power from the barrel of a gun" and put forward the principle of "the Party commands the gun, but never allows the gun to command the Party".
