PLA theorists have developed a framework for doctrine-driven reform with the long-term goal of building a force capable of fighting and winning “local wars under conditions of informatization.” Drawing upon foreign military experiences, particularly U.S.-led campaigns up to, and including, Operation ENDURING FREEDOM and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, Soviet and Russian military theory, and the PLA’s own combat history, China is transforming across the whole of its armed forces.
The pace and scale of these reforms are broad and sweeping. However, the PLA remains untested in modern combat. This lack of operational experience continues to complicate outside assessment of the progress of China’s military transformation. The same applies to China’s internal assessments of its own military capabilities, for which China’s civilian leaders must rely upon the advice of commanders lacking direct experience in modern combat or upon “scientific” combat models divorced from the realities of the modern battlefield.
Analysis of authoritative speeches and documents suggests China relies on a body of overall principles and guidance known as the “National Military Strategic Guidelines for the New Period” to plan and manage the development and use of the armed forces.
Academic research suggests that the current Guidelines most likely date to 1993, reflecting the impact of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union on PRC military-strategic thinking, with “enhancements” in 2002 and 2004. The latter revisions likely reflect China’s perceptions of its security environment and the character of modern war, integrate lessons learned from China’s military modernization, and emphasize building forces to win “local wars under conditions of informatization.”
According to the 2008 Defense White Paper, these Guidelines emphasize fighting and winning local wars under conditions of informatization and building toward integrated joint operations, with a stress on asymmetric warfare—“make the best use of our strong points to attack the enemy’s weak points.” Citing the need to ensure “close coordination between military struggle and political, diplomatic, economic, cultural, and legal endeavors,” the Guidelines also emphasize the importance of integrating multiple instruments of state power to ensure deterrence and prevent conflict.
The operational, or “active defense,” component of the Guidelines posits a defensive military strategy in which China does not initiate wars or fight wars of aggression, but engages in war only to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Naval Warfare.
The naval component of “active defense” is termed “Offshore Active Defense.” The 2008 Defense White Paper describes the PLA Navy as a strategic service, developing the capability to operate in “distant waters.” The PLA Navy has three main missions: resist seaborne aggression, protect national sovereignty, and safeguard maritime rights. PLA Navy doctrine for maritime operations focuses on six offensive and defensive campaigns: blockade, anti-sea lines of communication, maritime-land attack, antiship, maritime transportation protection, and naval base defense.
PRC President Hu Jintao called China a “sea power” and advocated a “powerful people’s navy” to “uphold our maritime rights and interests” during a 2006 speech at a Navy CCP Congress. Other civilian leaders, PLA Navy officials, government writings, and PLA journals have argued that China’s economic and political power is contingent upon access to and use of the sea, and that a strong navy is required to safeguard such access. Despite increased consideration of missions farther from China, the Navy’s primary focus will remain on preparing for operations within the “first and second island chains” (see map), with emphasis on a potential conflict with U.S. forces over Taiwan. This is likely to remain true until there is a resolution of the Taiwan issue on terms Beijing finds acceptable.
Ground Warfare.
Under “active defense,” ground forces are tasked with defending China’s borders, ensuring domestic stability, and exercising regional power projection. PLA ground forces are transitioning from a static defensive force allocated across seven internal MRs—oriented for positional, mobile, urban, and mountain offensive campaigns; coastal defense campaigns; and landing campaigns—to a more offensive and maneuver-oriented force organized and equipped for operations along China’s periphery. The 2008 Defense White Paper describes the ground forces as moving from “regional defense to trans-regional mobility.” It states that ground forces reforms are aimed principally at making units “small, modular, and multi-functional” and at increasing capabilities for “air-ground integrated operations, long-distance maneuvers, rapid assault, and special operations.” PLA ground force reforms are modeled on Russian doctrine and U.S. military tactics. The ground forces appear to be leading the PLA’s effort to experiment with ad hoc, multi-service, joint tactical formations to execute integrated joint operations. In August and September 2009, more than 50,000 troops from four separate military regions participated in the PLA’s first ever large scale national mobility exercise, Kuayue (Stride) 2009.
Air Warfare.
The PLAAF continues its conversion from a force for limited territorial defense to a more flexible and agile force able to operate off-shore in both offensive and defensive roles, using the U.S. and Russian air forces as models. Mission focus areas include: strike, air and missile defense, early warning and reconnaissance, and strategic mobility. The PLAAF also has a leading role in the “Joint Anti-Air Raid” campaign, which appears to form the basis for much of China’s planning for anti-access and area-denial operations. Underscoring the ambiguity of offense and defense in PLA theory, the Joint Anti-Air Raid campaign is strategically defensive in nature, but at the operational and tactical levels, it calls for attacks against adversaries’ bases and naval forces.
The PLA’s new missions are also driving discussions about the future of the PLAAF, where a general consensus has emerged that protecting China’s global interests requires an increase in the PLAAF’s long-range transportation and logistics capabilities. There appears to be little public discussion about requirements to project combat air power far from China. As with the Navy, it is likely that the Air Force’s primary focus for the coming decade will remain on building the capabilities required to pose a credible military threat to Taiwan and U.S. forces in East Asia, deter Taiwan independence, or influence Taiwan to settle the dispute on Beijing’s terms.
Space Warfare.
PLA strategists see space as central to enabling modern informatized warfare, but PLA doctrine does not appear to contemplate space operations as an operational “campaign” on its own; rather, space operations form an integral component of all campaigns. The PLA’s military theoretical journal China Military Science argues that “it is in space that information age warfare will come into its more intensive points.” Specifically, space-based communications, intelligence, and navigational systems are important to enable and coordinate joint operations and win modern wars.
Accordingly, the PLA is acquiring technologies to improve China’s space capabilities. A PLA analysis of U.S. and Coalition military operations reinforced the importance of operations in space to enable informatized warfare, claiming that “space is the commanding point for the information battlefield. Battlefield monitor and control, information communications, navigation and position, and precision guidance all rely on satellites and other sensors.”
Concurrently, China is developing the ability to attack an adversary’s space assets, accelerating the militarization of space. PLA writings emphasize the necessity of “destroying, damaging, and interfering with the enemy’s reconnaissance … and communications satellites,” suggesting that such systems, as well as navigation and early warning satellites, could be among initial targets of attack to “blind and deafen the enemy.” The same PLA analysis of U.S. and Coalition military operations also states that “destroying or capturing satellites and other sensors … will deprive the opponents of initiatives on the battlefield and [make it difficult] for them to bring their precision guided weapons into full play.”
Integrated Network Electronic Warfare.
PRC military writings highlight the seizure of electromagnetic dominance in the early phases of a campaign as among the foremost tasks to ensure battlefield success. PLA theorists have coined the term “integrated network electronic warfare” to describe the use of electronic warfare, computer network operations, and kinetic strikes to disrupt battlefield information systems that support an adversary’s warfighting and power projection capabilities. PLA writings on future models of joint operations identify “integrated network electronic warfare” as one of the basic forms of “integrated joint operations,” suggesting the centrality of seizing and dominating the electromagnetic spectrum in PLA campaign theory.
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