Under President Xi Jinping’s leadership, the People’s Liberation Army (pla) has pursued an ambitious modernization effort. By 2049, Xi has instructed the pla to be a world-class military, and by 2027 the pla requires the capability to forcefully reunify Taiwan with China if required. Though China’s global reach is not yet permanent or a political priority, China’s military rise and far-reaching presence already has global implications today.
Introduction
Under President Xi Jinping’s leadership, the People’s Liberation Army (pla) has pursued an ambitious modernisation effort. The pla’s transformation is one from a predominantly land-based force with legacy platforms and systems and a siloed approach to military operations, towards a military force that prioritizes the sea, air, space, cyber and electromagnetic domains and is capable of integrated joint operations. By 2049, Xi has instructed the pla to be a world-class military, and by 2027 the pla requires the capability to forcefully reunify Taiwan with China if required. In order to achieve this, the pla has undergone numerous leadership changes, force organisational changes below the neck, extensive procurement of modern platforms and systems, and a reorientation of strategy. While reunification with Taiwan remains one of, if not the most important task bestowed on the pla, the Chinese military is also active globally. The pla’s role in the longer-term thus spans beyond a conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Though China’s global reach is not yet permanent or a political priority, China’s military rise and far-reaching presence already has global implications today.
pla under Xi Jinping – pla for a new era
The pla is a unique military. Outside observers should keep in mind two points about the pla: firstly, it is the armed wing of a political party rather than a country’s military. Secondly, military reforms aim to turn the pla into a force that serves the larger goal of achieving national rejuvenation rather than simply responding to a particular threat.
Xi highlighted in the 18th Party Congress work report that the pla required reforms to construct a “strong national defence and powerful armed forces that are commensurate with China’s international standing and meet the needs of its security and development interests” (The Eighteenth National Congress…, 2012). For any observers of the pla and China, it should be noted that the pla remains the armed wing of the Communist Party of China (ccp). Indeed, Xi is driven by a Mao-era belief that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” (Mao, 1966, p. 224). Over the years, Xi has repeatedly called for the pla’s political loyalty. Early in his term, he acted on this belief by conducting a wide-spread anti-corruption campaign that resulted in the purging of high-ranking pla officials among other ccp members. In 2014 at a military political work conference held in Gutian, Xi reflected that ideological and political development are vital to building the military and key to safeguarding the ccp’s absolute command of the troops (Xinhua, 2014). This year, the pla is undergoing another purge of high-ranking officials. The pla’s Rocket Force commander and political commissar, as well as the Chinese Defence Minister, have reportedly been implicated in a corruption investigation (Kuo et al., 2023; El Departamento de Desarrollo de Equipos…, 2023). Nevertheless, Xi remains in command of the Party and the pla, and as such the pla continues to serve ccp (and increasingly Xi’s own) ambitions and priorities.
Reunification with Taiwan is considered a core issue by Xi and the ccp. Indeed, in 2013 at a meeting with Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou’s envoy Vincent Siew said that “the issue of political disagreements that exist between the two sides must reach a final resolution, step by step, and these issues cannot be passed on from generation to generation” (Reuters, 2013). This was reiterated in Xi’s speech in 2019 when he addressed a meeting in Beijing on the 40th anniversary of the Chinese mainland’s Message to Compatriots in Taiwan (Xi says…, 2019).
However, Xi’s concept of military reforms and pursuing national rejuvenation indicate that the goals for the pla go beyond resolving the Taiwan issue. The linkage of China’s military capability within a discussion of China’s international relations in the 19th Party Congress work report was new. This signalled that China’s military not only required reform, but that military reform was necessary to match China’s rise. In subsequent years, this linkage between China’s global standing as a great power and its need to have an equally great military signals China’s view that this is both its right and a logical requirement. Xi emphasized that building a modern, strong and world-class military can provide ‘strategic support’ to China’s national rejuvenation. China’s 2015 Defence White Paper states that “without a strong military, a country cannot be safe nor strong. China’s armed forces take their dream of making the military strong as part of the Chinese Dream
pla strategy and doctrinal shifts under Xi
To achieve this goal, the pla required reform. In the 2015 Defence White Paper that updated China’s military strategy, China’s leadership laid out the drivers for Chinese military modernisation, the pla’s core tasks and the direction of change through reforms. The new strategic guidelines focused on winning informationized local wars. This reflected the pla’s observation that it had fallen behind the trends of modern warfare. According to the pla, modern warfare is exemplified by the use of sophisticated long-range, precise, smart, stealthy and unmanned weapons and equipment, the strategic significance of cyber and outer space as domains and tools of warfare, force restructuring, and the importance of the information domain in military operations. Local wars reflect the belief that conflict is likely to occur in China’s periphery, particularly in its Southeast. Additionally, the concept of local wars also reflects that warfare would remain limited and contained, and would not progress to large scale global wars.
In 2016, the pla had undergone significant structural and organisational reforms (Garafola, 2016). The pla had reformed into five theatre commands that were specifically mission-focussed. As an example, the Eastern Theatre Command is primarily responsible for preparing for and leading in a Taiwan Strait conflict. Xi had also reorganised and streamlined the Central Military Commission’s functional organs, centralising his power by placing his allies in key decision-making roles and streamlining decision-making structures. He established the pla Army as a service branch, created the pla Strategic Support Force in charge of cyber and space capabilities across the military, renamed the branch responsible for pla’s icbm capabilities as the pla Rocket Force, established a Joint Logistics Support Force to integrate strategic and campaign level forces, and implemented a new management and command system through the theatre commands and a joint operations command structure. The pla was also significantly downsized, particularly in the pla Army, while the plan and plarf force numbers increased (Decoding China’s vision…, 2020). Military education and research institutes were also restructured. Lastly, China’s Coast Guard and maritime militia now fall under the cmc’s command, as part of the People’s Armed Police.
The pla’s tasks in the ‘new era’ emphasize the national, peripheral and global roles that the military is expected to play, as outlined in the 2019 Defence White Paper (China’s National Defense in the New Era, 2019). These include safeguarding national territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, with a large focus on China’s 22,000 km land border, 18,000 km coastline and “China’s waters” in the East China Sea, South China Sea and Yellow Sea (ibid). Taiwan is included in this goal, as the paper states: “by sailing ships and flying aircraft around Taiwan, the armed forces send a stern warning to the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces” (ibid).
The pla is also tasked with improving its war fighting capabilities and combat readiness, along with carrying out military training in more realistic combat conditions. This includes maintaining strengths in new domains of cyber and outer space, as well as continuing to protect China against the three evils of terrorism, separatism, and extremism.
However, the White Paper also states that the pla is tasked with “protecting China’s overseas interests”, described as a crucial part of China’s national interest (ibid). The White Paper acknowledges the pla’s deficiencies in its ability to operate overseas. However, the pla is building far-seas forces, overseas logistical bases and enhancing its ‘capabilities in accomplishing diversified military tasks’. This activity is in the White Paper framed as China’s contribution to global security goods, such as through peacekeeping, anti-piracy operations, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts.
Modernisation for a Taiwan conflict
The structure of the reforms, and the types of capabilities that China has focussed on building through reforms and procurement, point towards building a force that can achieve reunification by force if so required by China’s leadership. The pla’s air, maritime, cyber, outer space and electromagnetic and missile capabilities point towards a military that firstly seeks to deter the us or other countries from participating in a Taiwan contingency. It hopes to do so by changing adversaries’ calculus in the event of a crisis or conflict by holding their military assets at risk. Secondly, the pla has built a force that significantly outmatches that of Taiwan. Regardless of Taiwan’s own military modernisation and stockpiling efforts, it will inevitably be outmatched by the large quantity of resources that the pla can draw on. This, however, doesn’t mean that a potential conflict with Taiwan will be easy for the pla. The pla also cannot guarantee that the us won’t intervene in a Taiwan contingency – the result of the us’s policy of strategic ambiguity. It is therefore unclear whether Beijing has a timeline for reunification and what decisions might lead it to decide that the potential success of a military conflict over Taiwan is worth the risk of its failure.
Only Xi will determine when to reunify by force. However, Xi’s statements have provided a timeline for the pla’s military modernisation and give an indication of when China seeks to have built the capabilities to attack Taiwan, even if this does not provide any further information on Xi’s political will to do so. In Xi’s 19th Party Congress work report speech, he outlined a timeline by which the pla is required to reach three goals, and in 2020, another goal was added (Xi Jinping’s report…, 2017; Nouwens, 2020). By 2020, the pla needed to have achieved basic mechanization and made progress towards informatization. iiss estimates that this goal has more or less been achieved, though the pla’s own assessments of progress in informatization reflect some lack of progress towards this goal. The pla is currently working towards the 2027 goal of achieving the capabilities required for a Taiwan contingency, should political will require reunification by force. This includes greater emphasis on unmanned intelligent combat capabilities and the development of modern logistics, improving China’s strategic deterrence, and improving training and exercises (Full text of the Report…, 2022). By 2035, the pla needs to have become a fully modernised military and achieved informatization while progressing towards intelligentization. And by mid-century (2049) the pla is required to be a global top-tier military capable of fighting and winning wars.
It is important that although reunification with Taiwan remains a ‘core interest’ for Xi and the ccp, China is increasingly concerned about other potential flashpoints that might distract it from its priority of being able to respond to a potential Taiwan conflict. With China’s deepened relationship with Russia to its North and an alliance with the dprk to the East, China’s main concerns for instability and spillover stem from its Western borders. China faces a tense relationship with India along its disputed border along the Western Theatre Command, where deadly clashes occurred in 2020 (Boyd & Nouwens, 2020). China is furthermore concerned about instability in Afghanistan following the us and nato withdrawal from the country (China’s position on the Afghan Issue, 2023). A growing area of discussion among Chinese analysts is, therefore, the possibility that the pla may have to fight on multiple fronts in the event of a conflict.
pla as a global security actor
While China’s military reform goals can be seen through the lens of capability development, they can also be seen through geographical lenses. The nearer-term goals relate to contingencies and priorities in the Indo-Pacific region: protecting China’s territory, and ensuring territorial integrity, including in China’s maritime periphery and Taiwan. The later goals of 2035 and 2049 would see the pla graduate to becoming a world-class military – one that has matched or outmatched its adversaries or rivals (Tianyou, 2018). Though one cannot directly equate the concept of ‘world-class’ with a global ambition, one can assume that once the pla is world-class and has matched or outmatched the us military as the leading military power in the Indo-Pacific, it has greater ability to use its military resources to safeguard global interests. With China’s interests in the Indo-Pacific guaranteed, China’s military can focus on goals further abroad.
The pla is already a global military actor and present in a variety of ways around the world. China only has one official military base in Djibouti. However, reports indicate that the pla could potentially make use of Chinese-owned or operate dual-use ports along the Belt and Road Initiative. Furthermore, reports also suggest that China is currently building a military base in Ream, Cambodia (Nakashima & Cadell, 2022). The pla will require further bases globally as maintenance support and logistics hubs in the future if it intends to pursue China’s global interests further afield.
The pla is pursuing a blue water naval-deployment ambition that is capable of operating globally. The plan strategy focusses on far-seas protection beyond the first island chain (Zhou, 2015). Between 2014-2018, China launched naval vessels with a total tonnage greater than the entire tonnages of the entire French, German, Indian, Italian, South Korean, Spanish, or Taiwanese navies (Childs & Waldwyn, 2018). The plan still lacks operational experience and the technical capabilities of Western navies, though it has learned from military operations other than war and its cooperation with Western navies in the past. Sealift for operations further afield remains an area of weakness for the pla. The military also lacks medium and heavy air lift capabilities. Although the plaaf is building its transport capacity, its deliveries in areas such as heavy transport and tanker fleets are slower than for other capabilities. Another weakness remains the pla’s global command and control arrangements, as single service operations are currently overseen by pla service headquarters.
Further afield the pla ground forces contribute to un peacekeeping operations in Africa and the Middle East, while plan has participated in unilateral and ad-hoc bilateral non-combatant evacuations, as well as anti-piracy operations in the Middle East and in the Gulf of Aden (Troop and Police Contributors, 2023; Beraud-Sudreau & Nouwens, 2022: 1-23). The pla also exercises globally with partner country militaries. However, analysts have pointed out that few of these exercises are joint in nature due to their limited nature and due to the pla’s priority operations being located in its immediate region (Wuthnow et al., 2021). Analysts point to the possibility of the pla moving towards conducting joint operations beyond China’s neighbourhood in the future as a next step in the pla’s evolution to a world-class status (ibid).
The pla also increasingly contributes to achieving China’s foreign policy goals. Traditionally, this task has predominantly been the responsibility of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, in 2015, President Xi Jinping presented a more prominent role for military diplomacy. According to Xi, military diplomacy should support the overall national foreign policy, protect national security, sovereignty, and development interests, and promote military construction (Zhou, 2015).
In addition to a constant drumbeat of military-to-military exchanges across the globe, the pla is also responsive to global developments and potential opportunities to play new diplomatic roles. For example, during the covid-19 pandemic, the pla transported and donated medical supplies and vaccines to countries around the world. It also provided opportunities for joint learning and sharing of best practices through video conferences with partner militaries and provided in-country education and training (Nouwens, 2021).
Conclusion
President Xi Jinping has set the course to turn the pla into a modern military that can help China achieve great power status. This requires the pla to be able to resolve remaining priority disputes within China’s immediate neighbourhood in order to create regional stability and achieve the ccp’s political goals. However, the pla is learning to chew and walk gum at the same time. While the pla is laser-focussed on a Taiwan contingency or preparing for regional flashpoints, China’s military is also slowly building up experience of operating globally in limited but varied ways. While the pla has been tasked with the vague objective of protecting Chinese overseas interests, it is clear that greater pla engagement and presence should be expected in the future. For that to be achieved, the pla will require additional procurement, logistics facilities around the globe, improved and varied exercises and potentially further organisational changes at home to clarify command structures.
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