The rapid rise of China’s military power, its alliance with Russia, and its aggressive use of its new found capabilities, renders it the most dangerous adversary America has ever faced. Over the next three days, the New York Analysis of Policy and Government will present the complete report by the U.S. Department of Defense on Beijing’s highly advanced armed forces.
The PRC’s national strategy to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049 is deeply integrated with its ambitions to strengthen the PLA. In 2017, General Secretary Xi Jinping laid out two PLA modernization goals during his speech to the 19th Party Congress: to “basically complete” PLA modernization by 2035 and to transform the PLA into a “world class” military by 2049. Throughout 2020, the PLA continued to pursue its ambitious modernization objectives, refine major organizational reforms, and improve its combat readiness in line with those goals. This includes the PLA developing the capabilities to conduct joint long-range precision strikes across domains, increasingly sophisticated space, counterspace, and cyber capabilities, and accelerating the large-scale expansion of its nuclear forces. In 2020, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced a new milestone for PLA modernization in 2027 broadly understood as the modernization of the PLA’s capabilities to be networked into a system of systems for “intelligentized” warfare. If realized, the PLA’s 2027 modernization goals could provide Beijing with more credible military options in a Taiwan contingency.
As the PRC continues to marshal all elements of its national power toward its centenary goals in 2049, DoD’s annual report strives to provide an authoritative assessment of the PRC’s strategic objectives. The report highlights the comprehensive scale of the CCP’s governance system, whereby the PLA’s modernization serves as a crucial component of a national system galvanized to achieve the PRC’s national strategy. The PRC’s strategy to achieve “national rejuvenation” is not limited to domestic efforts. This strategy entails efforts to change international conditions to suit the CCP’s concept of a “community of common destiny.” This report illustrates the importance of meeting the pacing challenge presented by the PRC’s increasingly capable military and its global ambitions.
UNDERSTANDING CHINA’S STRATEGY
China’s National Strategy
- The PRC’s strategy aims to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049 to match or surpass U.S. global influence and power, displace U.S. alliances and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, and revise the international order to be more advantageous to Beijing’s authoritarian system and national interests. This strategy can be characterized as a determined pursuit of far-ranging efforts to expand the PRC’s national power.
- Despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing continued its efforts to advance its overall development including steadying its economic growth, strengthening its armed forces, and taking a more assertive role in global affairs. In response to both long and short-term economic trends, the CCP unveiled a new economic strategic task, or a new “development pattern,” called “dual circulation (双 循环).”
- The PRC has characterized China’s view of strategic competition in terms of a rivalry among powerful nation states, as well as a clash of opposing ideological systems. Beijing views the United States as increasingly determined to contain the PRC, creating potential obstacles to its strategy. Additionally, the PRC’s leaders are increasingly willing to confront the United States and other countries in areas where interest diverge.
Foreign Policy
- The PRC’s foreign policy seeks to build a “community of common destiny” that supports its strategy to realize “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Beijing’s revisionist ambition for the international order derives from the objectives of its national strategy and the Party’s political and governing systems.
- In 2019, the PRC recognized that its armed forces should take a more active role in advancing its foreign policy, highlighting the increasingly global character that Beijing ascribes to its military power.
- In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was a driving force behind the PRC’s foreign policy efforts, as Beijing sought to deflect any culpability for the virus and its initial spread, and to capitalize on its narrative of domestic success and foreign assistance.
Economic Policy
- The PRC’s military modernization objectives are commensurate with, and part of, Beijing’s broader national development aspirations. The PRC’s economic, technological, political, social, and security development efforts are mutually reinforcing and support Beijing’s strategy to shape international and regional environments that accept and facilitate Beijing’s interests.
- The PRC’s economic development supports its military modernization not only by providing the means for larger defense budgets, but through deliberate Party-led initiatives such as Made in China 2025 and China Standards 2035, as well as the systemic benefits of the PRC’s growing national industrial and technological base.
- In the rollout of the PRC’s 14th Five Year Plan (2021-2025), the Party announced a shift to a new “development pattern” of “dual circulation (双循环).” Dual circulation is focused on accelerating domestic consumption as a driver of economic growth, shifting to higher-end manufacturing, and creating “breakthroughs” in key technologies along critical high-end global supply chains, all while emphasizing “mutually reinforcing” foreign investment in these key technologies to provide the capital and technology necessary to advance domestic technological innovation in support of the PRC’s security and development objectives
Military-Civil Fusion Development Strategy
- The PRC pursues its Military-Civil Fusion (MCF; 军民融合) Development Strategy to fuse its economic, social, and security development strategies to build an integrated national strategic system and capabilities in support of the PRC’s national rejuvenation goals.
- Beijing’s MCF strategy includes objectives to develop and acquire advanced dual-use technology for military purposes and deepen reform of the national defense science and technology industries, and serves a broader purpose to strengthen all of the PRC’s instruments of national power.
- The PRC’s MCF development strategy encompasses six interrelated efforts: (1) fusing China’s defense industrial base and its civilian technology and industrial base; (2) integrating and leveraging science and technology innovations across military and civilian sectors; (3) cultivating talent and blending military and civilian expertise and knowledge; (4) building military requirements into civilian infrastructure and leveraging civilian construction for military purposes; (5) leveraging civilian service and logistics capabilities for military purposes; and, (6) expanding and deepening China’s national defense mobilization system to include all relevant aspects of its society and economy for use in competition and war.
Defense Policy and Military Strategy
- The PRC has stated its defense policy aims to safeguard its sovereignty, security, and development interests. The PRC’s military strategy remains based on the concept of “active defense.”
- The PRC’s leaders stress the imperative of strengthening the PLA into a “world-class” military by the end of 2049 as an essential element of its strategy to rejuvenate the PRC into a “great modern socialist country.” In 2020, the PLA added a new milestone for modernization in 2027, to accelerate the integrated development of mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization of the PRC’s armed forces, which if realized would provide Beijing with more credible military options in a Taiwan contingency.
- In November 2020, the CMC issued the “Chinese People’s Liberation Army Joint Operations Outline (trial) (中国人民解放军联合作战纲要(试行)” described as the “top-level law” of the PLA’s combat doctrine system in the “new era” that would strengthen the requirements and procedures for joint operations, combat support, national defense mobilization, and political work, among others.
- In 2020, the PLA remained primarily oriented toward “safeguarding” its perceived “sovereignty and security” interests in the region, while emphasizing a greater global role for itself, such as through delivering COVID-19 aid abroad and the pursuit of overseas military facilities, in accordance with the PRC’s defense policy and military strategy.
The report continues tomorrow