Red Arsenal: a new databank on China’s latest military hardware

Post’s comprehensive databank visualises each weapon with graphics to help readers understand Beijing’s wide-ranging arsenal

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President Xi Jinping visits a brigade of the PLA Rocket Force last October. The PLA aspires to be a “world-class military” by 2049. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 10:00am, 25 Aug 2025Updated: 10:18am, 25 Aug 2025

The People’s Liberation Army is arguably the world’s most rapidly evolving military, yet it remains the least understood by outsiders.

The PLA has not engaged in a war in more than four decades and has left no footprint in actual combat in that time, but the intensity of its exercises and expansion of its arsenal have attracted global attention.

As China prepares for a major military parade next month to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II, the PLA is expected to showcase its newest hardware.

The parade comes at a key juncture, a decade after President Xi Jinping kicked off his comprehensive overhaul of the PLA and just two years before the Chinese military’s centenary.

The PLA aspires to be a “world-class military” by 2049, a phrase implying the armed forces would reach a level on par with the US military.

To help readers better understand this important event and military developments in recent years, the South China Morning Post is launching the Red Arsenal, a multimedia databank examining China’s weapons systems today.

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