Explainer | China military: how Beijing is pushing forward its plan for a powerful, modern armed forces
- Beijing wants the People’s Liberation Army to be ‘fully modernised’ by 2027, the centenary of its founding during the civil war
- It’s been downsized and restructured, while the government spends more to develop advanced weapons and technologies like artificial intelligence
The Red Army
What does it look like today?
China’s military has been significantly downsized since the 1980s as it tries to streamline operations, but it remains the world’s largest army with more than 2 million active personnel. That is even after the most recent efforts to reduce the numbers, when some 300,000 troops were retrenched, according to a defence white paper released by Beijing in 2019.
That put the CMC in charge of overall administration of the military, while the theatre commands focus on operations and troop development, according to state news agency Xinhua, citing an adviser to the commission’s leading group on reform.
What’s the plan?
Xi laid out his ambition of building a strong army less than a month after he took power in 2012. Eight years on, at a policy meeting in October, the party unveiled its plan to build a “fully modernised army” by 2027 – the year the PLA will mark its centenary.
The ultimate goal, according to analysts, is to have a military that is on par with that of the United States – the world’s strongest fighting force. But they say it still has a long way to go.
Beijing’s latest plan calls for military modernisation to be sped up and highlights an urgent need to improve the PLA’s strategic capabilities to safeguard China’s sovereignty, security and development interests.
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The growth of Chinese military power over the past four decades
Allies and regional tensions
In its 2019 defence white paper, Beijing stated that “China advocates partnerships rather than alliances and does not join any military bloc”. China also seeks to position itself as a defender of peace, and claims it stands against aggression and expansion and pursues a policy that is defensive in nature.