The Role of Ideology in Building the Communist Party

The PLA, the People's Liberation Army, unlike most modern militaries which serve de jure and de facto and serve an oath of loyalty to a particular nation state or government, the PLA is different. They were founded in competition with another Chinese military during the Civil War; they are sort of charged with maintaining the authority of the party itself. And so this comes into play in a lot of different ways. The highest level way I can think of would be to talk about the role of ideology in building the party,. But in general, yeah, it's a different beast.