Everything You Need To Know About the Chinese Military

Three reports from the Pentagon very accurately describe the rapid growth and modernization of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. U.S. Department of Defense

David M. Finkelstein, US Naval Institute: Everything You Need To Know About the Chinese Military If You Don't Read Chinese

The Pentagon has released three very detailed reports this year on the Chinese People's Liberation Army. They are exceptional sources at a critical time in the modernization of China's military.

Last month, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its annual report Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019. Also known as the China Military Power Report (CMPR), it joins two other major DoD publications produced this year that focus on People’s Republic of China (PRC) military affairs: the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA’s) China Military Power: Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win (January 2019) and Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA: Assessing Chinese Military Reforms (National Defense University Press, February 2019). With these three publications, DoD has placed into the public domain an impressive amount of information and analysis about the Chinese military.

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WNU Editor: A must read for China watchers. The three publications are the following:

Released on 3 May 2019 by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019, is an annual publication required by the U.S. Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act of FY 2000. Thus, there is a statutory requirement for DoD to publish this report, as well as congressional guidance on some of its content. A Pentagon spokesman referred to it as “…the authoritative statement from the United States government on military and security developments involving China.” Consequently, the judgments, analyses, concerns, and policy statements in this document merit special attention.

The second publication, DIA’s China Military Power: Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win, is a new product in a new series. According to the report’s preface, in 2017 DIA began to produce a series of public domain reports that provide “overviews of major foreign military challenges” faced by the United States; the subject of the first one was Russia. Next in the series was Global Nuclear Landscape 2018, followed a year later by China Military Power.

The third major DoD publication in 2019 is an edited volume—Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA: Assessing Chinese Military Reforms. At 736 pages, this tome is the first (and still the only) full-length, scholarly, English-language study focused exclusively on the post–2015 PLA reforms and reorganization.