Capabilities for Counter Intervention and Power Projection
The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its summary of the Pentagon report, China Military Power 2020.
The PLA is developing capabilities to provide options for the PRC to dissuade, deter, or, if ordered, defeat third-party intervention during a large-scale, theater campaign such as a Taiwan contingency.
The PLA’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities are currently the most robust within the First Island Chain, although the PRC aims to strengthen its capabilities to reach farther into the Pacific Ocean.
The PRC also continues to increase its military capabilities to achieve regional and global security objectives beyond a Taiwan contingency.
The PLA is developing the capabilities and operational concepts to conduct offensive operations within the Second Island Chain, in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and in some cases, globally. In addition to strike, air and missile defense, anti-surface and anti-submarine capabilities improvements, China is focusing on information, cyber, and space and counterspace operations.
Nuclear Deterrence
China’s strategic ambitions, evolving view of the security landscape, and concerns over survivability are driving significant changes to the size, capabilities, and readiness of its nuclear forces.
China’s nuclear forces will significantly evolve over the next decade as it modernizes, diversifies, and increases the number of its land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms.
Over the next decade, China’s nuclear warhead stockpile—currently estimated to be in the low200s—is projected to at least double in size as China expands and modernizes its nuclear forces.
China is pursuing a “nuclear triad” with the development of a nuclear capable air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM) and improving its ground and sea-based nuclear capabilities.
New developments in 2019 further suggest that China intends to increase the peacetime readiness of its nuclear forces by moving to a launch-on-warning (LOW) posture with an expanded silo-based force.
THE PLA’S GROWING GLOBAL PRESENCE
CCP leaders believe that the PRC’s global activities, including the PLA’s growing global presence, are necessary to create a “favorable” international environment for China’s national rejuvenation.
The CCP has tasked the PLA to develop the capability to project power outside China’s borders and immediate periphery to secure the PRC’s growing overseas interests and advance its foreign policy goals.
China’s Global Military Activities
The PRC has increasingly recognized that its armed forces should take a more active role in advancing its foreign policy goals.
As the PRC’s overseas interests have grown over the past two decades, the Party’s leaders have increasingly pushed the PLA to think about how it will operate beyond China’s borders and its immediate periphery to advance and defend these interests.
In 2019, the PLA continued to expand its participation in bilateral and multilateral military exercises, normalize its presence overseas, and build closer ties to foreign militaries.
PLA Overseas Basing and Access
The PRC is seeking to establish a more robust overseas logistics and basing infrastructure to allow the PLA to project and sustain military power at greater distances.
Beyond its current base in Djibouti, the PRC is very likely already considering and planning for additional overseas military logistics facilities to support naval, air, and ground forces. The PRC has likely considered locations for PLA military logistics facilities in Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Seychelles, Tanzania, Angola, and Tajikistan. The PRC and Cambodia have publicly denied having signed an agreement to provide the PLAN with access to Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base.
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The PRC’s Influence Operations
The PRC conducts influence operations to achieve outcomes favorable to its strategic objectives by targeting cultural institutions, media organizations, business, academic, and policy communities in the United States, other countries, and international institutions.
The CCP seeks to condition domestic, foreign, and multilateral political establishments and public opinion to accept Beijing’s narratives.
CCP leaders probably consider open democracies, including the United States, as more susceptible to influence operations than other types of governments.
RESOURCES AND TECHNOLOGY FOR FORCE MODERNIZATION
The PRC’s long-term goal is to create an entirely self-reliant defense-industrial sector—fused with a strong civilian industrial and technology sector—that can meet the PLA’s needs for modern military capabilities.
The PRC has mobilized vast resources in support of its defense modernization, including the implementation of its MCF Development Strategy, as well as espionage activities to acquire sensitive, dual-use, and military-grade equipment.
In 2019, the PRC announced its annual military budget would increase by 6.2 percent, continuing more than 20 years of annual defense spending increases and sustaining its position as the second-largest military spender in the world. The PRC’s published military budget omits several major categories of expenditures and its actual military-related spending is higher than what it states in its official budget.
Science and Technology Goals Supporting Military Modernization
China seeks to become a leader in key technologies with military potential, such as AI, autonomous systems, advanced computing, quantum information sciences, biotechnology, and advanced materials and manufacturing.
China has invested significant resources to fund research and subsidize companies involved in strategic S&T fields while pressing private firms, universities, and provincial governments to cooperate with the military in developing advanced technologies.
China continues to undermine the integrity of the U.S. science and technology research enterprise through a variety of actions such as hidden diversions of research, resources, and intellectual property.
Foreign Technology Acquisition
The PRC pursues many vectors to acquire foreign technologies, including both licit and illicit means. The PRC’s efforts include a range of practices and methods to acquire sensitive and dual-use technologies and military-grade equipment to advance its military modernization goals.
The PRC leverages foreign investments, commercial joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, and state-sponsored industrial and technical espionage, and the manipulation of export controls for the illicit diversion of dual-use technologies to increase the level of technologies and expertise available to support military research, development, and acquisition.
In 2019, the PRC’s efforts included efforts to acquire dynamic random access memory, aviation, and anti-submarine warfare technologies.
U.S.-CHINA DEFENSE CONTACTS AND EXCHANGES IN 2019
U.S. defense contacts and exchanges conducted in 2019 supported overall U.S. policy and strategy toward China, were focused on reducing risk and preventing misunderstanding in times of crisis, and were conducted in accordance with the statutory limitations of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, as amended.
Pursuit of a constructive results-oriented relationship with China is an important part of U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific region. The 2018 National Defense Strategy seeks areas of cooperation with China from positions of U.S. strength, with a long-term aim to set the military-to military relationship on a path of strategic transparency and non-aggression, and to encourage China to act in a manner consistent with the free and open international order.
Photo: A Fighter jet attached to an aviation brigade of the air force under the PLA Eastern Theater Command takes off for a sortie during a round-the-clock flight training exercise on August 30, 2020. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Zhang Shu and Xu Yifan)