søndag 22. desember 2024

Six Takeaways From the Pentagon’s Report on China’s Military

On Wednesday, December 18, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released a 182-page report on China’s military. The China Military Power Report, as it is colloquially known, was mandated by Congress in 2000 and has been issued every year since, providing the best unclassified resource on the state of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Analysts of the PLA and China more broadly eagerly await its release, comparing passages and tables against previous versions to see how China’s military is evolving.

This year’s report revised upwards the estimate of China’s defense budget, the second-largest in the world (behind the United States), to one-and-a-half to two times its public defense budget ($330 billion to $450 billion). While the report included a special section on corruption in the PLA, it would be a mistake to focus on this issue at the expense of the significant strides China is clearly making toward building a highly modern and capable military that can threaten the United States and its allies and partners.

Indeed, the fact that China’s leader Xi Jinping continues to aggressively root out corruption in the PLA over a decade into his tenure demonstrates his determination to have a military that can provide him with credible options to achieve his political objectives, above all unification with Taiwan.