As its reach and capabilities extend in all directions, China has emerged as a subject of deep concern for Washington and for democratic capitals across Asia, including Canberra, New Delhi, Manila, Taipei and Tokyo.
China’s People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, has benefited from 30 years of budget rises, upgrades in its prestige and professionalism, a string of new bases and outposts across the South China Sea, and plentiful support from the country’s assertive president, Xi Jinping.
All of that has left the Pentagon and numerous critics on Capitol Hill alarmed over the Communist regime’s military ambitions in the not-too-distant future.
“All indications point to the PLA meeting President Xi Jinping’s directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027,” the U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander, Admiral John Aquilino, cautioned last month.
The U.S. intelligence community, in its 2023 National Intelligence Assessment, warned that China, “a near-peer competitor, …is increasingly pushing to change global norms and potentially threatening its neighbors.”
Since then, while the U.S. has been involved in major conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the PLA has largely avoided direct warfare, adopting a military strategy of creeping advances, grey-zone operations and swift de-escalation when conflicts do flare up.
Cautious tactics, combined with apparent risk-aversion in the Chinese Communist Party, economic reliance upon global trade and even the country’s worrying demographic trends, suggest the PLA may never offer battle.
From ‘human waves’ to ‘salami slicing’
Part of the case for a less militant China is the fact that, traditionally, China was not a warrior society.
“The phrase ‘Serving in the military is no good’ – something I learned early as a student – was very resonant from an early period in China,” recalled Alex Neill, a PLA-watcher with Pacific Forum, of his days studying Chinese. “It’s different to the warlike culture of Russia, with its Cossack tradition, and the West, where the military was respectable.”
Humiliated by imperialist incursions in the 19th and 20th centuries, China was dubbed “The Sick Man of Asia.” Only after Mao Zedong’s communist forces won the Chinese Civil War in 1949 did the PLA smash stereotypes that China could not fight.
In 1950, Chinese forces marched into Tibet. Then the PLA’s “human wave” tactics shocked the world by ejecting U.S.-led forces from North Korea. The PLA won the Himalayan border terrain during a brief clash with India in 1962, tested an atomic weapon in 1964, and battled Soviet troops on the China-USSR border in 1969.
Beijing engaged in on-off artillery confrontations over Taiwan’s offshore islands from 1958-1979, stormed briefly into northern Vietnam in 1979, and won offshore territories from Vietnam in the Spratly Islands in 1988.
Embarrassing, heavy losses in the 1979 conflict with Vietnam triggered a military soul-searching for the regime. In the mid-1980s, China‘s annual defense budgets took flight.
But that escalation has slowed a bit in recent years. Beijing’s defense spending has multiplied by a factor of 2.3 since 2013, but the PLA is not enjoying the double-digit percentage increases of a decade ago, according to Defense News.
The defense budget increase for 2024 was 7.2% over 2023, behind the country’s overall budget increase of 8.6 %.
Still, the 2024 figure — 1.7 trillion yuan, or $236.1 billion — marks three decades of increases, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute calculated that in 2022, real Chinese defense spending was 27% higher than stated amounts. That falls far short of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2024 outlay of $883.7 billion, but there’s no doubt the PLA’s capabilities are soaring.
Fielding the world’s largest active-duty military and its third-largest nuclear arsenal, the PLA operates “carrier killer” missiles, hypersonics and space assets. Having commissioned its first carrier in 2012, the PLA Navy now deploys three, with a fourth under construction.
But for all the build-up and the unease it has caused the U.S. and its allies, China is not actually fighting anyone, anywhere.
Around disputed islands, reefs and fishing grounds in South China, East China and Yellow Seas, it is largely Chinese Coast Guard units and “maritime militias” — centrally directed fishing fleets — that engage with water cannon and ship rammings, not the vastly more powerful PLAN.
In 2001, the death of a Chinese fighter pilot who collided with a subsequently captured U.S. spy aircraft was resolved relatively quickly by diplomats. Lethal border fistfights between PLA and Indian troops in 2020, 2021 and 2022 did not escalate. Both sides held their fire.
Even Taiwan, considered the likely flashpoint in any war China will fight, may not be the burning threat some fear. Dave Frederick, deputy director for China at the U.S. National Security Agency, suggested last month that an amphibious assault on the self-governing island may be beyond PLAN capabilities.
This does not mean China‘s military leaders are standing still. In 2016, the PLA secured its first overseas naval base, on the Horn of Africa in Djibouti, and also secured access rights to a China-funded port in Ream, Cambodia, in 2023.
Weaponized PLA air-sea bases, many built up from artificial islands and reefs, dwarf anything China‘s neighbors can boast, underwriting Beijing’s determination to dominate the South China Sea.
Around Taiwan, the PLA is extending its operational reach by continually testing Taipei’s air defenses, contesting the Taiwan Strait’s median line and previously agreed boundaries around offshore islands.
Persistent air patrols force Japanese and Taiwanese pilots to scramble endlessly, while U.S. pilots accuse Chinese pilots of repeated acts of recklessness. Weather balloons — possibly reconnaissance probes — have been widely released, including over Taiwan and the U.S.
Reinforced by cyber and cognitive tactics, this incremental strategy is dubbed “salami-slicing” by Western analysts.
Changing of the guard
Mao’s death in 1976 and Beijing’s opening of U.S. relations in 1979 were landmarks in toning down military adventurism.
“The beginning of reform and opening in 1978 under Deng Xiaoping meant an end of the driving force behind the party’s ID – class struggle,” said Drew Thompson, a researcher at the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy at Singapore’s National University.
Chinese leaders between Mr. Deng, who assumed power in 1978 were seen as pragmatists, focusing on growing China’s economy and trade, not on military adventures abroad.
Mr. Xi, in power since 2013 and now serving an unprecedented third five-year term as president and head of the Chinese Communist Party, is different.
“He came to power with the perception that the party was at risk of dissolution,” Mr. Thompson, a former Pentagon official, said. “It was admitting members for non-ideological reasons, gaining advantages for businesses. That’s the fundamental dynamic Xi changed.”
Mr. Xi purged party ranks, upgraded censorship and stoked nationalism with references to past humiliations in speeches, TV and film.
“Xi is very fixated on history to justify contemporary policy decisions,” Mr. Thompson said. “He is fixated on ensuring the continued rule of his dynasty – the party – and that requires asserting and defending interests at borders.”
Fond of addressing troops and wearing uniforms, Mr. Xi, who was never a soldier, professionalized the party’s armed wing, the PLA.
“China puts out some impressive-looking recruiting videos and they’re all about war-fighting – not self-improvement and inclusiveness,” said Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel. “I’ve seen a few, and even I find them motivating.”
Lack of combat experience — something the PLA itself admits is problematic — may not be a handicap, said Mr. Newsham, recalling the successes of U.S. troops in Operation Desert Storm against Iraq’s inferior forces: “Good training will get you quite a ways.”
‘Winning without fighting’
PLA’s physical power, however, has so far been balanced with operational prudence under Mr. Xi. One reason concerns political demographics.
“I think the PLA is risk-averse: Among other things, it is a military of one-child-policy children, and parents have weighed in, quite vigorously, that they don’t want to see the military expose their only children to risk,” said David Keegan, a China expert at John Hopkins.
Given China‘s exposure to the global economy, its reliance on exports, and the storm of sanctions likely to follow any assault on Taiwan, Mr. Xi is constrained.
“He is averse to chaos and acutely aware of risk,” said Mr. Thompson. “I don’t see with that mentality how he would see any benefit from a global conflict.”
The Biden administration says China has continued to trade with Russia‘s defense industry, but Beijing has drawn a line against providing Moscow with weapons for its war in Ukraine. In February, China called for all nuclear-armed states to embrace a “no-first-use” policy, and in April resumed direct military-to-military talks with American commanders that had been halted during a particularly tense time in 2023.
Recent events suggest Mr. Xi and his aides are facing personnel problems in senior party and PLA ranks that remain worrisome, including a shakeup of the top leadership of China‘s growing nuclear forces.
“Xi has purged the Rocket Force – the crown jewel of the PLA!” said Mr. Neill. “And he has had to sack his defense minister.”
The bottom line: China‘s military is modernizing and beefing up, but its future deployment and mission remain a question mark.
“Xi is adroit at the operational space below the threshold of war,” said Mr. Neill. “The South China Sea reclamation operations were a masterstroke, as was the Djibouti base, and building a wide-ranging, global military.”
But battle evasion as a strategy has deep roots in the country’s military thinking: Classical Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu famously advised: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
“That’s how the Chinese fight: So-called political warfare, subversion, gray-zone warfare and the non-kinetic parts of ‘unrestricted warfare’ – think economic, financial, biological, chemical/drug warfare and the granddaddy of them all, proxy warfare,” said Mr. Newsham, author of “When China Attacks.” The ultimate aim: “Getting your enemy’s elites to do your bidding.”
China‘s tactics short of war are intended to soften up an enemy, so…kinetic warfare isn’t even necessary – or else it’s somewhat easier because the enemy has been ground down.”
