The People's Republic of China
In 2017, the Defense Intelligence Agency began to produce a series of unclassified Defense Intelligence overviews of major foreign military challenges we face. This volume provides details on China’s defense and military goals, strategy, plans, and intentions; the organization, structure, and capability of its military supporting those goals; and the enabling infrastructure and industrial base. This product and other reports in the series are intended to inform our public, our leaders, the national security community, and partner nations about the challenges we face in the 21st century.
Document includes:
Historical Overview Military Doctrine and Strategy Perceptions of Modern Conflict , Core Elements of Command and Control Reform , Modernizing Joint Command and Control , Core Chinese Military Capabilities , Power Projection and Expeditionary Operations , Nuclear Forces and Weapons, Biological and Chemical Warfare, Space/Counterspace, Cyberspace,
Denial and Deception , Logistics and Defense-Industrial Modernization, Underground Facilities, Missions Other Than War
Since the 1949 Communist Revolution, China has devised nine different military strategies, which the People's Liberation Army (PLA) calls strategic guidelines. What accounts for these numerous changes? Active Defense offers the first systematic look at China's military strategy from the mid-twentieth century to today. Exploring the range and intensity of threats that China has faced, M. Taylor Fravel illuminates the nation's past and present military goals and how China sought to achieve them, and offers a rich set of cases for deepening the study of change in military organizations.
Drawing from diverse Chinese-language sources, including memoirs of leading generals, military histories, and document collections that have become available only in the last two decades, Fravel shows why transformations in military strategy were pursued at certain times and not others. He focuses on the military strategies adopted in 1956, 1980, and 1993's when the PLA was attempting to wage war in a new kind of way to show that China has pursued major change in its strategic guidelines when there has been a significant shift in the conduct of warfare in the international system and when China's Communist Party has been united.
Delving into the security threats China has faced over the last seven decades, Active Defense offers a detailed investigation into how and why states alter their defense policies.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to develop rapidly across all aspects- hardware, technology, personnel, organization, etc. The PLA’s aerospace forces are, in many ways, leading that change. These include the PLA Air Force (PLAAF), PLA Rocket Force (PLARF), Naval Aviation, and space and cyber assets affiliated with the PLA Strategic Support Force (PLASSF). This inaugural volume from the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI), seeks to provide a brief primer on the trends affecting these forces and provide basic information about their composition and role today.This publication outlines the roles and missions of China’s aerospace forces, the PLA Air Force and its five branches, the PLA Rocket Force, and the PLAStrategic Support Force. It also identifies trends in PLA aerospace training and operational proficiency for these forces, and discusses the near-term outlook. There is a plethora of information, which evolves on an almost constant basis, available to leaders and policymakers on the hardware and technical aspects of these forces. As such, that is not the focus of this publication. Rather, this work is intended to serve as foundational work, capturing a snapshot of capabilities, and an outline of organizations, while identifying trends underway at the time of its writing, late 2016 to summer 2017.
The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind?
Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, as Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s―much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China―like Europe―was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world's great military powers.
Once termed the "world's largest military museum," the Chinese military has made enormous progress over the past twenty years. With skyrocketing military budgets and new technology, China's tanks, aircraft, destroyers, and missile capabilities are becoming comparable to those of the United States. If these trends continue, how powerful will the Chinese military be in the future? Will its capabilities soon rival or surpass those of the United States? The most comprehensive study of its kind, this book provides a detailed assessment of China's military capabilities in 2000 and 2010 with projections for 2020. It is the first of its kind in outlining a rigorous, theoretically- and empirically-grounded framework for assessing military capability based on not just weaponry but also doctrine, training, equipment, and organizational structure. This framework provides not only the most accurate assessment of China's military to date but an important new tool in the study of military history.
Military Strategy Classics of Ancient China presents modern translations of eight of the most important and relevant military texts from antiquity, which have gained new prominence among Western students of Eastern military strategy and philosophy. These texts provide background for a wide range of disciplines, including: history, linguistics, wuxia, martial arts, business and trial strategy. Contents include:
The Six Secret Teachings – Jiang Ziya
The Art of War – Sun Tzu
Methods of War – Sima Rangju
The Book of Wuzi – Wu Qi
The Book of Wei Liaozi – Wei Liao
The Three Strategies of Huang Shigong
The Thirty Six Stratagems
Questions and Replies: Tang Taizong and Li Jing
This volume explores the relationship between culture and the military in Chinese society from early China to the Qing empire, with contributions by eminent scholars aiming to reexamine the relationship between military matters and law, government, historiography, art, philosophy, literature, and politics.
The book critically investigates the perception that, due to the influence of Confucianism, Chinese culture has systematically devalued military matters. There was nothing inherently pacifist about the Chinese governments’ views of war, and pragmatic approaches―even aggressive and expansionist projects―often prevailed.
Though it has changed in form, a military elite has existed in China from the beginning of its history, and military service included a large proportion of the population at any given time. Popular literature praised the martial ethos of fighting men. Civil officials attended constantly to military matters on the administrative and financial ends. The seven military classics produced in antiquity continued to be read even into the modern period.
Gaining an understanding of China's long and sometimes bloody history can help to shed light on China's ascent to global power. Many of China's imperial dynasties were established as the result of battle, from the chariot warfare of ancient times to the battles of the Guomindang (KMT) and Communist regimes of the twentieth century. China's ability to sustain complex warfare on a very large scale was not emulated in other parts of the world until the Industrial Age, despite the fact that the country is only now rising to economic dominance.
In A Military History of China, Updated Edition, David A. Graff and Robin Higham bring together leading scholars to offer a basic introduction to the military history of China from the first millennium B.C.E. to the present. Focusing on recurring patterns of conflict rather than traditional campaign narratives, this volume reaches farther back into China's military history than similar studies. It also offers insightful comparisons between Chinese and Western approaches to war. This edition brings the volume up to date, including discussions of the Chinese military's latest developments and the country's most recent foreign conflicts.
Long the world’s most populous country, China has always flexed its muscles beyond its borders. Today, China stands on the threshold of global economic domination, a true rival to the United States: in a generation or so it will be twice as wealthy as the US, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy combined. Bestselling author Erik Durschmied traces China’s passage through a thousand years of war, colonial adventurism, and internecine politics, and seeks to understand what this huge and unstoppable country is today—as well as what the future holds for a fragile world in which China reigns as the latest economic and military superpower.
A long-standing rivalry between China and Japan has intensified in recent years, owing in part to growing parity between the two Asian great powers. The authors examine how China has stepped up its surface and air activities near Japan, particularly near the Senkaku Islands. They survey the patterns in Chinese vessel and air activity, consider Japan’s responses, and offer suggestions for the United States and Japan to manage emerging challenges.