Book from the People's Liberation Army Conference

Introduction: China’s Military Strategy and Posture in an Increasingly Complex Security Environment

by Benjamin Frohman and Jeremy Rausch

May 29, 2025

The book will be released in late May.

This is the introduction to The PLA in a Complex Security Environment: Preparing for High Winds and Choppy Waters.

The 2023 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Conference, cohosted by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and the China Strategic Focus Group at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, examined how the perception of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of its external security environment is shaping its use of the PLA as a tool of national power. Key questions the conference sought to address included the following:

How do top Chinese civilian and military leaders assess the security environment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)?
What are the key risks and opportunities these leaders believe they face in achieving their goals?
How are the PLA’s missions, strategy, and operational posture changing against the backdrop of a more complex external security environment?
What role will the use of military force play in achieving the CCP’s goals?
How effectively is the CCP using the PLA in coordination with other tools of national power—diplomatic, economic, and informational—to achieve its goals?

Key findings include the following:

The CCP is using military force and coercion with greater frequency in pursuit of the PRC’s territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region and strategy to become a great global power.
The CCP’s more prominent use of the PLA is driven by its view that the PRC’s external security environment is worsening while simultaneously presenting it with historic opportunities to accomplish the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Chinese leaders more aggressively use military force and coercion against weaker countries but continue to exercise caution when confronted with the prospect of direct military intervention by the United States.
The CCP’s calculus surrounding the use of military force is informed by confidence that historical forces are propelling the PRC’s rise as a great power. As a result, Chinese leaders have been emboldened to act more forcefully in the region while awaiting opportunities to take bolder actions to seize or expand control over additional territory as the PRC increases its global power and influence.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been instructive for Chinese leaders, both highlighting potential shortfalls in PLA capabilities and plans and offering important lessons for preparing for a potential future military conflict.

Even though the PRC’s more forceful approach in the Indo-Pacific has yielded only mixed results to date, concern is growing in the United States and capitals around the world about Beijing’s more assertive use of the PLA to achieve its regional and global goals. From the China-India border to the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and the CCP’s sweeping sovereignty claims over Taiwan and the South China Sea, recent years have witnessed increasingly aggressive actions by the PLA to assert control over territory the CCP believes to be vital to the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Flashpoints have included a fatal clash on the China-India border in 2020, which saw the PRC’s first use of lethal force against India in nearly half a century; the PLA’s aggressive efforts to prevent the Philippines’ resupply of Second Thomas Shoal, which continued into 2024; and what CIA director William Burns stated publicly to be CCP general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) Xi Jinping’s instruction to the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.[1] Meanwhile, China’s security forces continue to expand their presence outside the PRC’s immediate periphery, including into the small island states of the Pacific.

Amid these tensions, the United States must update its understanding of the drivers behind the PRC’s more aggressive military posture, including the CCP’s perception of its security environment and thinking regarding the use of military coercion and force to achieve its goals. This PLA Conference volume provides in-depth analysis of Chinese leaders’ assessments of the challenges and opportunities in their external security environment, the PRC’s military and economic preparations for a future conflict, and the PLA’s evolving posture and capabilities in key regions, including around Taiwan, in the South China Sea, and in Oceania.

Using Military Power in a Turbulent World

The CCP’s increasing use of military power in the Indo-Pacific and beyond is informed by a darkening view of its external security environment. Chinese leaders have long perceived both challenges and opportunities for achieving their goals, but in recent years they have assessed that the challenges facing them have grown more severe. This view was articulated by General Secretary Xi Jinping at the CCP’s 20th National Congress in October 2022, where he declared:

[2]

The CCP’s growing sense of unease was captured as early as January 2021, when a commentary in the People’s Daily expressed similar concern about the challenges the CCP faced heading into the centennial year of its founding. “The closer we get to national rejuvenation, the less likely smooth sailing will be, the more risks, challenges, and even stormy seas there will be,” the commentary warned. It continued:

[3]

Shortly before the 20th Party Congress, General Secretary Xi repeated this assessment verbatim, confirming its authoritative encapsulation of views at the highest level of the party-state.[4]

A central factor driving the CCP’s assessment of its growing risks is the increasingly fraught state of its relationship with the United States. In 2019 the PRC’s vice minister of public security warned that “suppression” by the United States had become the most significant external factor affecting the CCP’s “political security.”[5] At the National People’s Congress in March 2023, General Secretary Xi took the unusual step of publicly identifying the United States as behind the PRC’s growing challenges, declaring that “Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development.”[6] That same month, the PRC Foreign Ministry highlighted the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (AUKUS) as posing profound threats to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime and regional stability and peace.[7]

Perhaps paradoxically, despite these challenges the CCP maintains that long-term trends are in its favor. In 2020, an official statement assessed that the PRC’s “period of strategic opportunity” would continue beyond the first two decades of the 21st century—the period initially envisioned by former CCP general secretary Jiang Zemin in 2002 for increasing the PRC’s power and influence in a relatively benign external environment.[8] What Chinese leaders believe to be a “profound adjustment in the international balance of power” and “great changes unseen in a century” (百年未有之大变局) reflect their perception of significant opportunities in an era of relative U.S. decline vis-à-vis the PRC. Encapsulating this view, at the same time that Chinese leaders warned of increasing risks and challenges, they began publicly stating that “the East is rising while the West is in decline”—a judgment attributed to General Secretary Xi himself.[9] Put otherwise by the PRC’s top leader, “time and momentum are on China’s side” and the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is now on an irreversible historical course.”[10]

In the CCP’s view, taking advantage of these epochal opportunities is not a passive endeavor. Rather, the CCP believes that it must exert itself and actively “struggle” to achieve its goals, as Kim Fassler highlights in her chapter in this volume. “Military struggle” factors prominently among these efforts, which Chinese leaders believe is a particularly important tool for the PRC to achieve its goals while deterring challenges to its policies from the United States and U.S. regional allies and partners. This philosophy was prominently expressed by former defense minister Wei Fenghe in 2020, when he told delegates to that year’s National People’s Congress that the PRC should “use fighting to promote stability.”[11] Illustrating this approach, that year the PLA provoked a violent incident that resulted in the first military fatalities on the Sino-Indian border in 45 years. It also escalated its multiyear coercion campaigns around Japan’s Senkaku Islands, against Taiwan, and in the South China Sea. These campaigns continued into 2024 as the PRC used the PLA and China Coast Guard to sail into waters around the Senkaku Islands and to prevent the Philippines from resupplying its outpost at Second Thomas Shoal. In December 2023 the PRC Foreign Ministry warned that “China-Philippines relations are at a crossroads” and that “the Philippines must act with caution.”[12] Meanwhile, more than 1,700 PLA aircraft intruded into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in 2023, further stoking regional tensions.[13]

These concerning trends require a better understanding of how the CCP is thinking about the use of military force to achieve its objectives in an increasingly complex security environment. To this end, this volume examines how CCP leaders assess the PRC’s external security environment, including both the opportunities and threats presented therein; how this assessment is driving changes to the PLA’s strategy, planning, and modernization efforts; and how the PLA’s posture and capabilities are evolving in key theaters of interest to the United States. The following sections survey the arguments of each chapter and summarize key findings.

Chinese Leaders Assess the PRC’s Challenges and Opportunities

The 20th Party Congress highlighted CCP leaders’ view of an increasingly uncertain and challenging external security environment. In his address to the assembly, General Secretary Xi Jinping reported that international developments posed a “series of immense risks and challenges” and that the world had “entered a new period of turbulence and change.” The opening section of this volume examines how growing diplomatic, economic, and military tensions with the United States and other countries are affecting Chinese leaders’ decision-making, party-military relations, and whole-of-society mobilization efforts in the PRC for a potential military conflict.

In the volume’s first chapter, Kim Fassler examines the concept of “profound changes unseen in a century” as distilling the CCP’s Marxist assessment of its opportunities to shape world events amid favorable historical trends. Identifying Xi’s address to the 2017 Ambassadorial Work Conference as being one of the first official uses of this phrase, Fassler concludes that the gathering marked an inflection point toward more assertive efforts by the CCP to achieve its goal of national rejuvenation. She argues that “changes unseen in a century” is the CCP’s assessment that strategic trends of multipolarity and economic globalization that it has observed since at least the 1980s are accelerating, driven by the rise of developing economies, technological advancement, and China’s growing national power. Under Xi, Beijing has responded to these “profound changes” with new strategies to advance China’s vision for global governance and doubled down on “struggle” to accelerate favorable strategic trends. At the same time, Fassler concludes that the apparent certainty of Chinese leaders regarding long-term favorable trends may make them more flexible in their tactics for engaging in protracted competition with the United States and more willing to tolerate near-term setbacks.

In the second chapter, Joel Wuthnow contributes a fresh analysis of Xi’s long-running efforts to strengthen his control over the PLA. To this end, the chapter focuses on the ways in which Xi has catered to the interests of senior officers, politically influential subgroups like the PLA Army, and the PLA itself as a powerful interest group during a period otherwise marked by disruptive change caused by the historic reforms and reorganization of the PLA beginning in 2015. Wuthnow argues that many portrayals of Xi’s leadership of the PLA have myopically focused on purges of political rivals and a coercive anticorruption campaign while overlooking the broader political strategy that Xi used to consolidate power and push through ambitious reforms. According to Wuthnow, this strategy must also be recognized as respecting long-standing norms and practices in the PLA, including its prerogatives as a highly autonomous player in the Chinese government bureaucracy. Based on public data, including leadership biographies, budgets, and resource allocation, Wuthnow explains how Xi has galvanized support for his reorganization efforts at the individual, subgroup, and institutional levels. Nonetheless, the chapter concludes that Xi has also had to accept limits on his ability to pursue further reforms to the PLA and that the PLA’s continuing high degree of bureaucratic autonomy creates the conditions for additional diplomatic embarrassments like the 2023 spy balloon incident.

The third chapter examines efforts by the CCP to transition its national defense mobilization system (NDMS) from a vehicle for emergency response and economic subsidization to a “war oriented” system capable of supporting national requirements during a protracted conflict. Erin Richter and Howard Wang review the evolution of the NDMS, identifying its initial objectives as geared toward leveraging resources across the whole of Chinese society to enable military operations supporting a “people’s war.” Subsequently in the mid to late 2000s, the NDMS priorities shifted away from wartime requirements toward economic development through subsidization and domestic emergency response. Richter and Wang identify the most recent transition as occurring in 2015 when the PRC initiated a series of reforms to prioritize the NDMS’s war mobilization capabilities—a trend that solidified after the 20th Party Congress in 2022 as PLA media increasingly emphasized the “war orientation” of national defense mobilization work. The chapter concludes that the greatest significance of the 2015 reforms may be in freeing the military to focus on national defense missions while the civilian National Development and Reform Commission picks up other functions supporting national defense mobilization previously handled by the PLA.

The PLA’s Mandate amid a Complex Security Environment

As Chinese leaders perceive an increasingly complex external security environment, they have directed the PLA to step up its preparations to overcome challenges confronting the PRC and take advantage of new opportunities. The second section of this volume explores how the PLA’s missions, strategy, and operational posture are evolving in the context of the PRC’s changing security environment, as well as what role the CCP expects the PLA to play in achieving national goals in the coming years. It also examines the strategic, operational, and doctrinal lessons the PLA has learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and assesses the PLA’s continuing efforts to adequately prepare its personnel to fight and win against a well-prepared opponent on the modern battlefield.

In the second section’s first chapter, Timothy Heath challenges the view that Chinese leaders are preparing to initiate a conflict in the near term that could involve military intervention by the United States. Instead, he argues that the PLA has been tasked to focus on long-term military modernization, deterrence, and support of the government’s efforts to incrementally change the status quo in China’s favor through coercion and other non-war methods. Heath finds that the CCP assesses the primary challenges to its governing legitimacy to be domestic, relegating the PLA to a supporting role in achieving the party’s goals in the coming decades. As such, he argues that coercion and gray-zone tactics may constitute the principal Chinese military challenge to Taiwan and others in the region in the near term, while warning that the United States must also plan to deter the long-term threat of an outright attack by the PRC to compel Taiwan’s unification.

The next chapter examines the impact of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine on Beijing’s calculus regarding the use of military force to most effectively achieve political goals. From their wide-ranging analysis of original Chinese sources, Maryanne Kivlehan-Wise and Tsun-Kai Tsai argue that Beijing is carefully studying the trajectory of Russia’s invasion—a conflict described by one authoritative source as “the most serious geopolitical event since the end of the Cold War”—and drawing lessons that inform its views on future warfare. The authors highlight several of these lessons as worthy of attention. First, authoritative Chinese observers judge that the risk of an extremely costly and protracted war between great powers is more likely than at any time since the world wars. Second, these sources clearly warn of the potentially game-changing impact of external assistance, especially from the United States and its allies, on a conflict between otherwise mismatched opponents. Among the most significant forms of external assistance they identify are intelligence support, material assistance, and training provided by the advanced industrial democracies. Finally, Chinese sources have carefully observed the nuclear dynamics of the conflict, concluding that Russia’s nuclear deterrent largely failed to force Ukraine’s capitulation and deter large-scale military assistance from outside powers once Ukraine proved itself resilient against Russia’s initial assault.

In the next chapter, Dennis Blasko and Rick Gunnell argue that, despite major improvements in capabilities in recent years, senior PLA leaders still foresee decades of work before they will feel fully confident in the force’s ability to win a conflict against one of the world’s leading militaries. Xi Jinping himself has remarked on many of the PLA’s self-assessed weaknesses, which include “peacetime malpractices,” “ability panic,” and the “five incapables,” which refer to “some” commanders being incapable of judging the situation, understanding the intentions of higher echelons, making operational decisions, deploying troops, and dealing with unexpected situations. Highlighting the PLA’s perception of itself as lagging behind the world’s leading militaries in many technologies, the chapter concludes that while the PLA might be required to fight at any time, its leaders would prefer to achieve the nation’s goals through efforts short of war and build additional confidence before initiating large-scale combat operations.

Is China Preparing for the Use of Force?

At the same time that its leaders express doubt over some aspects of the force’s ability to fight a large-scale modern conflict, the PLA is steadily increasing its presence and improving its readiness to carry out assigned missions around the PRC’s periphery and beyond. This volume’s final section explores the PLA’s changing force posture and capabilities around Taiwan, in Southeast Asia, and in the South Pacific and how Beijing is using the PLA as an instrument of power to deter challenges to its interests and seize opportunities in pursuit of its goals.

In the section’s opening chapter, Andrew Erickson examines the PLA’s posture toward Taiwan and the force’s growing capabilities and options for conducting a cross-strait offensive campaign. Erickson argues that Xi Jinping is devoting tremendous national resources to improve the PLA’s options for an offensive operation against Taiwan and that his “centennial military building goal” of 2027 represents a major milestone for developing a full range of options to coerce or conquer the island. At the same time, Erickson finds that many Chinese writings suggest that Beijing does not yet believe the time is ripe to initiate a military conflict against Taiwan and that “peaceful reunification” remains the least costly way for resolving cross-strait political differences. Others, however, express greater willingness to use military coercion and even force to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control. Erickson suggests that this view may be manifested in the PLA’s increasing use of military exercises and other pressure tactics to demoralize Taiwan’s leaders and population and instill a sense of futility in resisting the PRC’s growing national power.

In the next chapter, Ketian Zhang examines the role of the PLA in China’s strategy in Southeast Asia and makes four core arguments. The first is that China has preferred to use gray-zone coercion in lieu of direct military coercion in the South China Sea in recent years, while still using the PLA as an important backstop supporting the China Coast Guard. Second, Zhang finds that Beijing carefully calibrates its use of the PLA alongside its other tools of statecraft, such as gray-zone and economic coercion, in order to avoid direct military intervention by the United States. Third, China’s primary military goals in Southeast Asia are improving its combat capabilities, especially vis-à-vis the United States, and deterring other countries in the region from strengthening their own sovereignty claims. Fourth, Zhang argues that Beijing’s use of military and nonmilitary coercion often counteracts its economic “carrots” in the region, ultimately reducing the effectiveness of economic statecraft.

In the volume’s final chapter, Peter Connolly examines the significant increase in China’s security engagement with the Pacific Islands since 2017, noting that this engagement has been supported by and integrated with Beijing’s political and economic statecraft. He argues that China has executed its grand strategy in the Pacific Islands with comprehensive whole-of-nation statecraft to build dual-use facilities, establish a police presence in Pacific Island countries, and ultimately gain access to formal military bases. Connolly concludes that Beijing’s intensifying outreach in the Pacific Islands demonstrates that the region is of higher strategic importance for China than was previously commonly understood. Ultimately, he encourages the United States and its allies to adapt their approach to better understand the interests and agency of the Pacific Island states and their peoples, recognize the growing role of China’s police forces as its weapon of choice for competing in the South Pacific, and focus on and counter PRC efforts to achieve strategic access in the region.

Conclusion

The nine chapters in this volume from NBR’s 2023 PLA Conference offer important insight into the PLA’s increasingly prominent role in advancing Beijing’s interests in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. The first three chapters explore the ways in which Chinese leaders perceive the PRC’s external security environment, as well as how their assessment is shaping party-military dynamics and driving reforms to the national defense mobilization system. The next three chapters evaluate how an increasingly complex external security environment is shaping the PLA’s strategy and missions, what lessons the PLA has learned from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, and how senior Chinese leaders assess the abilities of the PLA’s personnel to execute their missions. The final three chapters examine the evolution of the PLA’s posture and presence in three key regional theaters—the Taiwan Strait, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific—and consider how Beijing is using the military tool of power to achieve its goals in each region.

Taken together, the chapters in this volume reveal that Chinese leaders view the PLA as playing an essential and in some cases increasingly prominent role in accomplishing national goals. At the same time, Beijing has also demonstrated caution in using the PLA in ways that could trigger military intervention or direct opposition from the United States. As Chinese leaders forecast long-term trends as being in the PRC’s favor, it is likely they will intensify their use of military and gray-zone coercion to pressure their neighbors and steadily change the status quo in a direction favorable to PRC interests. Meanwhile, the PRC may refrain, at least in the near term, from initiating a large-scale combat operation that could jeopardize its long-term prospects until such time as it feels its national power has grown to the point that the United States and other powers will not dare challenge it. Through their careful research and analysis, the contributors to this volume have produced fresh and insightful arguments that will be key to shaping ongoing debates about the PLA’s role in achieving the PRC’s goals now and in the years ahead.

NBR is grateful for its sponsors and partners at the China Strategic Focus Group at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. We are also grateful for the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia for providing the venue in which the conference took place. Without their support, the research published in this volume would not have been possible. Conference discussants, panel chairs, attendees, and keynote speakers, as well as NBR staff, including Roy Kamphausen, Alison Szalwinski, Audrey Mossberger, Rachel Bernstein, Josh Nezam, Jerome Siangco, Jaymi McNabb, Joshua Ziemkowski, and Jessica Keough, also deserve special thanks and acknowledgment for their contributions to the 2023 conference and accompanying volume.

Benjamin Frohman is Research Director for the Annual Conference on the People’s Liberation Army and a Nonresident Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Jeremy Rausch is Director with the Political and Security Affairs group at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Endnotes

[1] Olivia Gazis, “CIA Director William Burns: ‘I Wouldn’t Underestimate,’ Xi’s Ambitions for Taiwan,” CBS News, February 3, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-director-william-burns-i-wouldnt-underestimate-xis-ambitions-for-taiwan.

[2] Xi Jinping, “Hold High the Great Banner of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and Strive in Unity to Build a Modern Socialist Country in All Respects” (report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Beijing, October 16, 2022), http://my.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zgxw/202210/t20221026_10792358.htm.

[3] Ren Zhongping, “征途漫漫从头越: 论新征程上的孺子牛拓荒牛老黄牛精神” [Long Journey from Scratch: Of the Spirit of a Willing Ox, Pioneering Ox, and Old Ox in the New Journey], People’s Daily, January 22, 2021.

[4] Xi Jinping, “In the New Development Stage, the Implementation of the New Development Concept Will Inevitably Require the Construction of a New Development Pattern,” Qiushi, August 31, 2022.

[5] Kanis Leung, “China’s Public Security Ministry Warns Its Bureaus to Be on Guard against ‘Political Risks’ Caused by Influence of Protest-Hit Hong Kong,” South China Morning Post, June 29, 2019.

[6] Chun Han Wong, Keith Zhai, and James T. Areddy, “China’s Xi Jinping Takes Rare Direct Aim at U.S. in Speech,” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2023.

[7] “China Says AUKUS on ‘Dangerous Path’ with Nuclear Subs Deal,” Associated Press, March 14, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/china-aukus-nuclear-submarines-f6ecf854646e2dbddd6ebeaa2f2e971d.

[8] “Communiqué of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,” trans. China Aerospace Studies Institute, November 2021, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Translations/2021-11-17%20Communique%20of%20the%20Fifth%20Plenary%20Session%20of%20the%2019th%20Central%20Committee%20of%20the%20Communist%20Party%20of%20China.pdf?ver=YsJuJy8mBmqG_jIadpcHcA%3d%3d.

[9] U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “2021 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,” November 2021, chap. 1, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2021-11/Chapter_1_Section_1–CCPs_Ambitions_and_Challenges_at_Its_Centennial.pdf.

[10] Kinling Lo and Kristin Huang, “Xi Jinping Says ‘Time and Momentum on China’s Side’ as He Sets Out Communist Party Vision,” South China Morning Post, January 12, 2021; and Xi, “Hold High the Great Banner of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”

[11] Jun Mai, “Two Sessions 2020: China-U.S. Rivalry in ‘High-Risk Period,’ Chinese Defense Minister Says,” South China Morning Post, May 27, 2020.

[12] “China Urges Philippines to ‘Act with Caution’ amid South China Sea Dispute,” Al Jazeera, December 21, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/21/china-urges-philippines-to-act-with-caution-amid-south-china-sea-dispute.

[13] Micah McCartney, “China Deployed Over 1,700 Military Planes Around Taiwan in 2023,” Newsweek, January 5, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/china-military-aircraft-taiwan-strait-2023-1858106.