Why does the Pentagon believe China’s military buildup makes U.S. ‘increasingly vulnerable’?

Defense Department report asserts China’s ambition to displace US as globe’s most powerful nation

Jason Swensen, 01/02/26

Even as today’s military-related headlines focus largely on developments in Venezuela, America’s defense community is keeping an unblinking eye on China.

On Wednesday, China’s People’s Liberation Army completed two days of military exercises in the waters off Taiwan.

The maneuvers were likely aimed at asserting its sovereignty over the island just days after the United States announced a package of arms sales to Taiwan — a move criticized sharply by Beijing, according to the Associated Press.

And last week, the Department of Defense released its annual update on the Chinese military, asserting that the Asian nation’s historic military building “has made the U.S. homeland increasingly vulnerable.”

“China maintains a large and growing arsenal of nuclear, maritime, conventional long-range strike, cyber, and space capabilities able to directly threaten Americans’ security,” the report noted.

“In 2024, Chinese cyberespionage campaigns such as Volt Typhoon burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure, demonstrating capabilities that could disrupt the U.S. military in a conflict and harm American interests.”

For decades, China’s People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, has marshaled resources, technology and political will to achieve its vision of a world-class military. “The PLA is a key component of China’s ambition to displace the United States as the world’s most powerful nation,” according to the DOD report.

“The PLA measures its concepts and capabilities against the ‘strong enemy’ of the United States. Moreover, China’s top military strategy focuses squarely on overcoming the United States through a whole-of-nation mobilization effort that Beijing terms ‘national total war’.”

‘Projecting power worldwide’

China’s current military focus, according to the lengthy DOD report, is the First Island Chain that stretches from the Japanese archipelago to the Malay Peninsula in southwest Asia. The region is the “strategic center of gravity” for its regional goals.

The DOD’s China/military report to Congress states, optimistically, that under President Donald Trump’s leadership, relations between the U.S. and China are “stronger than they have been in many years” — adding that the department plans to build on those positive signs, focusing on stability and de-escalation.

At the same time, the report added, America’s military is “always ready and able” to defend U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific.

“We do not seek to strangle, dominate, or humiliate China.

“Rather, as laid out in President Trump’s National Security Strategy, we seek only to deny the ability of any country in the Indo-Pacific to dominate us or our allies. That means being so strong that aggression is not even considered, and that peace is therefore preferred and preserved.”

Trump is expected to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, next April in Beijing. In turn, Trump invited Xi to the White House for a state visit later in 2026.

In a Truth Social post last month, Trump wrote: “Our relationship with China is extremely strong!”

China’s intent for Taiwan reunification

China’s central goal — at least in the short term? Reclaiming Taiwan, which it considers a “breakaway province.”

“The PLA continues to make steady progress toward its 2027 goals, whereby the PLA must be able to achieve ‘strategic decisive victory’ over Taiwan, ‘strategic counterbalance’ against the United States in the nuclear and other strategic domains, and ‘strategic deterrence and control’ against other regional countries.

“In other words, China expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027.”

The PLA’s modernization is propelled by China’s defense spending and technological development.

“Since the first full year of Xi Jinping’s term as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s announced defense budget has nearly doubled,” according to the report.

“China continues to accelerate its development of military technology, including in military artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, and hypersonic missiles.”

China’s tenuous partnership with Russia

The DOD report also identified a deepening strategic partnership between China and Russia, likely driven by shared interest in countering the United States.

That partnership has included combined military exercises and sharing of some military technologies.

But despite continued growth in their relationship, Beijing and Moscow remain unwilling to establish a formal defense alliance with mutual security guarantees, the DOD report asserts.

“China and Russia continue to harbor a mutual distrust of each other, which likely prevents cooperation on areas each side perceives as sensitive. China also has stopped short of providing Russia with lethal aid for use in its war against Ukraine.”

Countering the U.S. through AI, critical technologies — and targeting intelligence

The DOD’s report also emphasized China’s aggressive efforts to achieve global leadership in science and technology — focusing on emerging technologies such as AI, biotechnology, quantum technology, advanced semiconductors, and advanced energy generation and storage.

“China believes that advances in AI technology will be critical to a new round of industrial change and the next revolution in military affairs,” according to the report.

這篇文章雖然有些老、舊，信息量還值得存檔備查；轉載於此。正文內之中譯為作者手筆；轉換為繁體則是編者下的指令。

Guns of September: What a Parade May Reveal About China’s Military Modernization

John S. Van Oudenaren, China Brief Notes, 08/28/25

Executive Summary:

*  The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) upcoming military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII will serve as both a symbolic display and an operational exercise, highlighting the PLA’s advancements in new combat domains—such as unmanned systems, directed energy, and electronic warfare—while also revealing improvements in command structure and organizational capacity. The parade aims to underscore loyalty to Xi Jinping as central to combat readiness, even as recent purges expose deep institutional instability and a persistent “trust deficit” between the CCP and the PLA. These tensions underscore the regime’s challenge in balancing political control with genuine military professionalization.
*  The PLA will use the parade to demonstrate its growing joint capabilities, showcasing an integrated “Four Services + Four Arms” model and the role of new branches like the Aerospace and Cyberspace Forces. The involvement of militia units and strategic strike formations further emphasizes the whole-of-force approach underpinning China’s military modernization trajectory.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is finalizing plans for its massive 80th anniversary commemoration of victory in the “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression” (中國人民抗日戰爭) and “World Anti-Fascist War” (世界反法西斯戰爭) (People’s Daily, June 25). The event, to be held in Beijing on September 3, will feature a troop review and speech by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary and Central Military Commission (CMC) Chairman Xi Jinping. Global attention will likely fixate on the long columns of entirely domestically produced armored vehicles, missiles, and warplanes rolling through Tiananmen Square, highlighting the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) growing firepower (China Daily, June 24; Xinhua, June 25). The parade will also contain important indications about PLA command structure, organizational capacity, and operational readiness.

New Combat Forces on Display

In addition to traditional weapons and equipment, the parade will showcase “new combat forces” (新型作戰力量), according to Major General Wu Zeke (吳澤棵), deputy director of the Military Parade Leading Group Office and deputy director general of the CMC Joint Staff Department’s Operations Bureau. Speaking at a June 24 state press conference on the planning for the commemoration, he said that this would reflect the PLA’s “strong ability to adapt to the scientific and technological developments and the evolution of conflict to win future wars” (適應科技發展和戰爭形態演變、打贏未來戰爭的強大能力) (State Council Information Office (SCIO), June 24). At a follow-up press conference on August 20, Wu detailed additional capabilities that will highlight the PLA’s improving combat capabilities in new domains and technological areas. These are set to include new land, sea, and air unmanned intelligent systems, directed energy weapons, and electronic jamming systems. The PLA will, per Wu, also use the parade to demonstrate its formidable strategic deterrent capability by exhibiting hypersonic, air and missile defenses, and strategic missiles (SCIO, August 20).

Non-Material Indicators of Military Modernization

Beyond a burgeoning arsenal, the parade also will illuminate two less tangible yet equally essential elements of PLA modernization: command structure and organizational capacity. On both counts, it will seek to show it can rise to the mantra of “Toward 100 Years, Toward Victory” (向百年，向勝利), now ubiquitous in PRC propaganda (81.cn; China Military Network, July 25). The slogan reflects increased emphasis under Xi on reaching the goals set by his predecessors; namely, realizing full military modernization by 2035 and becoming a “world-class military” by mid-century. As a steppingstone in these efforts, Xi added the PLA’s centennial in 2027 as a key benchmark for several key elements of military modernization: advancing mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization; modernizing doctrine, organization, personnel management, and technology; maximizing resources; and building a strong defense industrial base (China Brief, March 26, 2021).

At the August 20 briefing, Major General Xu Guizhong (徐貴忠) of the PLA Central Theater Command (解放軍中部戰區) stressed the parade’s operational nature as a test of the force’s organizational capacity, noting that effectively marshaling tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of weapons platforms is like “organizing for a major battle” (如同組織一場戰役) (SCIO, August 20). Indeed, CCTV reported that the second exercise in preparation for the parade on August 16-17 involved 40,000 troops (81.cn, August 17).

Loyalty Remains a Weak Link

At the June press conference, Wu Zeke emphasized the link between political uprightness, loyalty to Xi and the Party, and military effectiveness (SCIO, June 24). He stressed that the parade would showcase the PLA’s “political construction, new force structure, progress in modernization, and achievements in combat readiness” (政治建軍新風貌、力量結構新佈局、現代化建設新進展、備戰打仗新成效), all downstream of “resolutely following the Party’s command” (堅決聽黨指揮). Wu made certain to praise Xi, exclaiming how his leadership enables the PLA to “advance the spirit of the War of Resistance” (弘揚抗戰精神).

Loyalty was a prominent theme again on Army Day (August 1), with a PLA Daily editorial calling for “forging political loyalty” (鑄牢政治忠誠) and fighting the “decisive battle” (攻堅之戰) to achieve the PLA’s centenary goals (PLA Daily, August 1). The article pledges that the PLA will thoroughly implement Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military and the CMC Chairman Responsibility system. The shift over the past decade toward this new system and away from the previous CMC Vice-Chairman Responsibility System reflects Xi’s efforts to centralize organizational control over the PLA, which has enjoyed substantial autonomy throughout the reform era (China Leadership Monitor, July 14). As analysts Joel Wuthnow and Philip Saunders note in China’s Quest for Military Supremacy, Xi has pulled multiple levers to tighten the CCP’s grip on the PLA: re-emphasizing Party work and indoctrination as a part of a broader recommitment to Marxist principals; promoting his personal authority, including through promulgating Xi Jinping Thought in the military; implementing stricter personnel control; and strengthening oversight regimes (Google Books, March 10, 2025).

China builds new naval and air bases for Taiwan invasion

Allegra Mendelson, 09/08/25

China is carrying out large-scale development of air and naval sites along its eastern coast, which experts say could be used to launch an invasion of Taiwan.

In satellite images analysed by the Wall Street Journal, new berths for amphibious warships, as well as mega-airports, can be seen taking form.

While the facilities could have multiple uses, China’s primary military focus is on Taiwan.

Beijing claims Taiwan as its own, which the democratically elected government in Taipei strongly rejects, and has not ruled out the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.

“All of it goes to supporting China’s one military planning scenario, which is a Taiwan scenario,” Michael Dahm, a retired US navy intelligence officer, told the Wall Street Journal.

The US and the UK have both turned their attention to the Indo-Pacific in recent years as China increases its aggression towards Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.

請至源網頁查看地圖

Both John Healey, the UK Defence Secretary, and Pete Hegseth, his US counterpart, have warned about Beijing’s rising threat, with Mr Hegseth claiming in May that an attack against Taiwan could be imminent.

One new development that has caught analysts’ eyes is a new pier at the naval facility in Yueqing Bay (樂清灣), which is located north of Taiwan, off of China’s coastal city of Wenzhou (溫州，浙江省).

The berth now measures over a mile long and could be used to dock several large ships.

Approximately 20 vessels were seen docked at the pier recently, including tank transports, ship-to-shore landing craft, tankers and coast-guard cutters.

Experts say that all of this hardware could be deployed in the event of an attack on Taiwan.

A new helicopter base has also been built in Fujian province, which sits directly across the Taiwan Strait, which could be used to deploy troops to the country’s main island, as well as outlying islands, which are located even closer to China.

請至源網頁查看樂清灣軍港建築配置圖

Taiwan has focused its past military drills on several of these beaches, including Guanyin, Jiben, Beipu and Penghu, which are believed to be potential landing sites for an invasion.

Satellite images also show the expansion of mega-airports in eastern China, with at least two in key locations for a possible attack against Taiwan – one near Xiamen and another near Fuzhou.

The Xiamen Xiang’an International Airport, which is spread across Dadeng island (大膽島), has been under development for years.

Dadeng is located less than 5km from one of Taiwan’s outlying islands, Kinmen, which is often referred to as a potential front line in any future assault.

Images taken between 2014 and 2022 show the size of the airport nearly doubling after dredging was able to create more land.

At the Fuzhou Changle International Airport, which is also strategically located across the Strait from Taiwan, a new runway has been built right on the water.

請參見下文的《讀後》(即將刊出)；並請參考此欄各相關文章。

Is China’s Military Ready for War?

What Xi’s Purges Do—and Don’t—Mean for Beijing’s Ambitions

M. Taylor Fravel, 07/18/25

Anew wave of purges has engulfed the senior leadership of China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army. Since the 20th National Party Congress in October 2022, more than 20 senior PLA officers from all four services—the army, navy, air force, and rocket force—have disappeared from public view or been removed from their posts. The absences of other generals have also been reported, which could foreshadow additional purges.

Most notably, since the fall of 2023, three of the six uniformed members of the party’s Central Military Commission, the top body of the Chinese Communist Party charged with overseeing the armed forces, have been removed from their posts. The first to fall was Defense Minister Li Shangfu (李尚福), who was removed in October 2023 and expelled from the CCP in June 2024. Then, this past November, Miao Hua (苗華), the director of the CMC’s Political Work Department, which manages personnel and party affairs, was suspended for “serious violations of discipline” before being formally removed from the CMC last month. And most recently, the Financial Times reported that He Weidong (何衛東1、何衛東2 – 需訂閱), the second-ranked vice chair who has not appeared in public since early March, had been purged.

Never before has half the CMC been dismissed in such a short period. Even stranger is the fact that all three generals had previously been promoted by Chinese leader Xi Jinping; they were appointed to the CMC itself in 2022, after Xi consolidated his control over the party at the 20th Party Congress. He Weidong was even a member of the Politburo, one of the party’s top decision-making bodies, comprised of the 24 highest-ranking party leaders. And Miao and He have been described by analysts as being part of a “Fujian faction” within the PLA, because the generals had been stationed in that province at the same time as Xi and are believed to have close ties with him.

The fact that these high-profile purges are occurring now is not lost on outside observers. In 2027, the PLA will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding. It is also the year by which Xi expects China’s armed forces to have made significant strides in their modernization. Finally, the year is noteworthy because, according to former CIA Director Bill Burns, Xi has instructed the PLA to be “ready by 2027 to conduct a successful invasion” of Taiwan. Xi’s instructions do not indicate that China will in fact invade Taiwan that year, but, as Burns put it, they serve as “a reminder of the seriousness of his focus and his ambition.”

表單的底部With such ambitious goals set for the PLA, the question then arises as to how this new wave of purges could affect the PLA’s readiness. The purges themselves are likely to slow some weapons modernization programs, disrupt command structures and decision-making, and weaken morale—all of which would degrade the PLA’s ability to fight in the near to medium term. Beijing may now be forced to exercise greater caution before pursuing large-scale military operations, such as an amphibious assault on Taiwan, even as the PLA continues to pressure Taiwan with aerial activity and naval patrols around the island.

Nevertheless, it is useful to remember that Beijing has rarely waited for the right conditions before ordering the PLA into battle. In 1950, for instance, Chinese forces intervened in support of Pyongyang in the Korean War, even though China’s economy and society had been devastated by years of civil war. In 1962, the PLA attacked India, even though China’s most senior military officer had recently been purged for questioning Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward. And in 1979, Beijing dispatched an ill-prepared PLA to Vietnam, where Chinese troops suffered significant losses for limited political gains. Now, as then, Chinese leaders may pursue war even if the domestic economic and political conditions appear unfavorable—and even if the PLA is not ready to fight.

CASTAWAYS

For outside observers, it is notoriously difficult to gather detailed information and analyze the ongoing purges in China. The CCP rarely announces them, and even when they are publicized, the charges leading to dismissal are often vaguely described only as violations of discipline. Charges announced publicly may also not reflect the true underlying reason for an official’s removal from office. Still, there are several likely reasons that Li, Miao, He, and other senior officers were purged.

First, a common reason for many purges is graft. Corruption has long plagued the PLA and the CCP more broadly. Since Xi came to power in 2012, Beijing has more than doubled its defense budget in order to fund the military’s rapid modernization. This flood of new money, especially related to weapons procurement and construction projects, has increased opportunities for officers and defense industry executives to pad their budgets or skim money off the top. Before becoming defense minister, Li had been in charge of the CMC’s weapons development department, which oversees the procurement process. A few months before Li’s dismissal, both the commander and commissar of the PLA Rocket Force, and two of the commissar’s deputies, were all detained. The PLARF’s rapid expansion on Li’s watch, including the construction of more than 300 silos and the significant expansion of its ballistic missile arsenal, likely offered many opportunities for self-enrichment.

Some generals may also have been purged because they were engaging in bribery related to promotions and patronage networks. This has been a long-standing problem for the PLA: often, the most well-connected officers, rather than the most competent ones, are promoted to higher ranks. Miao, the head of the Political Work Department, oversaw personnel and appointments. If the promotions he signed off on were not strictly merit-based, it may have contributed to his undoing. Miao’s predecessor, Zhang Yang, was placed under investigation in 2017 for similar reasons. Less than two months later, he died by suicide, and the following year, he was posthumously expelled from the party.

CMC members and other senior officers may also have been removed if they were deemed to be using personnel appointments to create their own power centers, or “mountaintops,” within the PLA. Senior officers who prioritize the accrual of personal power are a liability for Xi because they create conflicting loyalties and factional tensions within the armed forces that can harm operational readiness. Because Miao and He were newly appointed members of the CMC, they may have sought to strengthen their positions at the expense of veteran members, such as the first-ranked Vice Chair Zhang Youxia (張又俠), a childhood friend of Xi’s. Xi has kept Zhang, now 75, on the CMC despite the normal retirement age of 68.

Finally, it’s possible that the purged senior officers committed no offense at all beyond incompetence: Xi may simply have been dissatisfied with their performance and lost confidence in their ability to lead and achieve his goals for the PLA. As Joel Wuthnow and Phillip Saunders observed in their new book, China’s Quest for Military Supremacy, the structure of the relationship between the party and the armed forces makes it hard for Xi to trust his generals. The PLA enjoys substantial autonomy with little direct supervision, so the party must rely on the PLA to discipline itself. Moreover, the highly specialized nature of modern military affairs means that the party lacks the expertise to ensure that the PLA is meeting the party’s modernization goals.

INSECURITY DILEMMA

Whatever the reasons for the recent purges, they will almost certainly degrade China’s combat readiness and the Chinese leadership’s confidence in the PLA’s capabilities. In order for the PLA to prevail in potential conflicts on China’s periphery, especially a war over Taiwan, it seeks to master joint operations, which combine elements from the different services and branches to achieve military objectives. The complexity of such operations requires unity of command and integrated planning, the interoperability of platforms within and across services, delegation and flexibility, and robust command, control, communications, and surveillance systems. Reorganizing the PLA to better conduct such operations was one of the main reasons Xi launched unprecedented organizational reforms in 2015. Now, although Xi has a number of reasons to avoid taking major military action against Taiwan, he may also be concerned about how well the PLA would perform so soon after the purges.

If the CCP uncovered corruption in the weapons procurement system, for instance, the party leadership may doubt the reliability and performance of the advanced weapons systems developed and fielded over the past decade. According to U.S. intelligence, some of China’s new ballistic missiles were filled with water, not fuel, and the blast doors constructed for new silos needed to be repaired or replaced. Efforts are likely underway to review and recertify new and planned weapons systems to ensure they will function as expected, which may slow their development and deployment.

The purges also disrupt the functioning of the entire command system. The CMC, a seven-member body that Xi chairs to oversee all aspects of the PLA, has 15 subordinate units. Yet with three of its six uniformed officers missing in action, key decisions relating to operations, planning, and force development may be delayed until new permanent members are appointed. Before joining the CMC, for example, He played a key role in planning operations in his capacity as head of the Eastern Theater Command, whose forces would play a central role in any operation against Taiwan; now the apex of military decision-making in China lacks someone with his experience.

Decision-making and command may also be affected in other ways. Officers at all levels are likely to become much more risk averse for fear of making decisions that could later ensnare them in a purge. The willingness of more junior officers to take initiative will also suffer, reinforcing the PLA’s already strong tendency toward centralization in decision-making that undermines effective joint operations. Officers at all levels will spend more time engaged in political work and study sessions related to party ideology and discipline at the expense of their professional military tasks. Morale may suffer, too, as officers worry who might be next, fueling distrust within the officer corps and weakening cohesion.

READY OR NOT

But the focus on how the leadership upheaval in the PLA may affect its operational readiness should not obscure a basic fact: Xi may well deem it necessary to fight even if the PLA is not completely prepared. Since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, China has usually gone to war when conditions appeared to be unfavorable.

In 1950, after much debate among the party’s senior leaders, Beijing decided to intervene in the Korean War, transforming the conflict into one largely between China and the United States. At the time, the CCP was focused on consolidating control over the entire country and rebuilding the economy after its war with the Nationalists. Many senior party and military leaders, weary after years of a punishing civil war, were reluctant to go up against the strongest force in the world. Yet in the end, the strategic rationale of keeping the United States off China’s border (and ideally off the entire Korean Peninsula) trumped these concerns. Yet by the time of the armistice in 1953, China’s armed forces suffered more than 500,000 casualties, while the war ended roughly where it began, along the 38^th parallel, and the United States began to build an alliance network along China’s eastern periphery.

Early the following decade, China attacked India’s forces on the two countries’ disputed border. At the time, Mao was on the back foot politically after his disastrous Great Leap Forward, an industrialization campaign in which as many as 45 million people perished in famines. Yet Chinese party and military leaders concluded that war was necessary to blunt Indian pressure on Tibet and restore stability to the Chinese-Indian border. Moreover, the attack occurred only a few years after Peng Dehuai (彭德懷), China’s top military officer throughout the 1950s, was purged for questioning the wisdom of the Great Leap Forward. Peng’s dismissal also led to the removal of other senior military officers who were seen as closely tied to him, shaking up the PLA high command. In this instance, China enjoyed overwhelming superiority on the battlefield, destroying Indian forces and achieving its political objectives, as India did not challenge China on the border militarily for the next two decades.

In 1979, Beijing invaded Vietnam, ostensibly to teach Hanoi a lesson for entering into an alliance with the Soviet Union, then China’s nemesis, and for invading Cambodia, which Beijing was supporting. At the time, China had only started to recover from the economic and political upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping remained in a power struggle with Mao’s chosen successor, Hua Guofeng. And the PLA was divided between Maoists and reformers. Deng was keenly aware of the PLA’s shortcomings, having described the force as “bloated, lax, arrogant, extravagant, and lazy”—hardly in fighting form. Deng even delayed the invasion by a month after his chief military adviser reported that the troops were not ready. Nevertheless, the need to signal resolve to counter Soviet encirclement outweighed the state of readiness. PLA forces paid a high price, with more than 31,000 casualties in just one month of fighting, and Vietnam did not withdraw its military presence from Cambodia until the late 1980s.

These military actions in Korea, India, and Vietnam represent the largest uses of armed force that the PLA has undertaken since the founding of the People’s Republic. In all three cases, political calculations trumped military readiness and favorable domestic conditions. Chinese leaders viewed these operations as conflicts of necessity, not choice or opportunity. If the recent purges harm the PLA’s readiness and reflect Xi’s confidence in the PLA, then opportunistic uses of force may be less likely in the near to medium term. But if Xi views military action against Taiwan as necessary, he will still order the PLA into battle.


M. TAYLOR FRAVEL is Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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