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An excerpt from The Operational Environment (2021-2030): Great Power Competition, Crisis, and Conflict
In the Introduction, we discussed how China is a rapidly modernizing, nuclear-armed nation that is on a trajectory to become a peer power to the United States. China is now our pacing threat in large part because it is our most technologically sophisticated adversary and effectively uses its economic clout and information operations to bolster its regional and increasingly global position at the expense of its adversaries. Although China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) lacks combat experience, it is a formidable force that is working diligently to introduce new capabilities and improve its training and leader development. In this article we will examine China’s rise in greater detail.
China wishes to prevail in the Competition or Crisis phase through the integrated use of its national power across the Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic (DIME) arena. China wishes to reach its desired ends by winning without fighting, and is prepared to use all instruments of national power to cause dissention among the American people, separate America from its allies and partners, and challenge American military advantage. If Crisis shifts to Conflict, Beijing hopes to win the first battle as overwhelmingly as possible, ensuring that an opponent has no desire for a second battle. China will contest us in all domains in Competition, Crisis, and Conflict, and its nuclear deterrent provides a factor that U.S. defense planning has not had to truly consider since the Cold War. The vast distances required to move a CONUS-based U.S. force to the so-called Chinese First Island Chain present a host of logistical and organizational challenges. China’s long-range precision weapons, as well as sensors and systems that can track and engage U.S. forces in all domains, exacerbate these challenges.
Beijing understood that its continued rise would lead to an outright rivalry and perhaps even an adversarial relationship with the United States and its Allies and partners. As a result, China began studying the U.S. approach to warfare and began broad modernization efforts to challenge the post-Cold War U.S. dominance.
China’s most recent sweeping approach to military modernization began in 2015. China is investing heavily in force modernization, and just like the United States, it is focused on key emerging technologies. Looking out to 2028, there likely will be a rough general technological equivalency between the United States and China, with both nations having relative advantages in some areas and disadvantages in others.
A great deal of attention is focused on China's material progress, which provides it overmatch capabilities under certain conditions or in niche areas. The PLA has some fires systems that outrange our own; it has highly capable EW systems; and it has developed sophisticated integrated air defense systems. At the same time, we stripped many of these capabilities from our force due to the demands of counterinsurgency. Moving forward, China is focusing on cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonics, and robotics to extend its ability to challenge us in multiple domains. This directly challenges the belief that the U.S. Army has superior equipment because China’s equipment is as good as ours, and in some cases better.
China's progress in modernization goes well beyond the materiel realm as it is also working to challenge us in the human capital dimension. New equipment will facilitate the effort, but if China is to defeat the United States, it recognizes the PLA will need well-trained soldiers and dynamic, thoughtful leaders. China has worked to modernize its training and instill a new culture of learning in its forces. It has established combat training centers similar to our own. It has also professionalized its leadership development efforts and is working to develop professional military education programs that cultivate more agile leaders.
China has designed new approaches to warfare with new doctrine that specifically challenges our own. Supporting this effort is China’s “intelligentized warfare” concept, which applies artificial intelligence’s machine speed and processing power to military planning, operational command, and decision support. China routinely conducts national-level and large-scale exercises designed to test its progress with this concept.
China’s PLA has reorganized its ground forces to compete with the U.S. Army. The PLA hopes to complete the massive transformation of its force, whereby combined arms brigades, and their parent group armies, field modern, mechanized forces by 2030. China established Theater Commands to manage joint operations and continues to develop new doctrine to enable joint operations. It even created a new branch of service—the Strategic Support Force—that focuses on information warfare, space operations, and cyber activities to back its intelligentized warfare approach. In terms of facilities, the PLA has created several man-made islands in the South China Sea where it can deploy its forces and increase its reach, creating potential overmatch within its so-called First Island Chain.
These modernization efforts are aimed directly at the three assumptions that have been the foundation of the U.S. Army’s position of dominance: that the U.S. Army is the best equipped force, best trained force, and the force best at maneuver warfare. Undoubtedly, China will continue to seek methods to erode our traditional strengths, disrupt our national cohesion, and stymy our ability to compete and win.