China’s Rapid Military Expansion

By neirfy @Adobe Stock

Andrew Erickson of War on The Rocks highlights China’s military expansion, focusing on advanced missiles, naval growth, and reforms aimed at asserting control over Taiwan by 2027. Despite corruption challenges, China’s buildup, including hypersonic weapons and high-end warfare capabilities, continues rapidly. Erickson urges preparedness to counter China’s rising power:

China’s military is both corrupt and increasingly capable. Yesterday, the Pentagon released its 24th China Military Power Report since Congress initiated its mandate in 2000, offering revelations unavailable elsewhere. The document reveals new details of the most dramatic military buildup since World War II, ongoing challenges that Chairman Xi Jinping and his party army are addressing with determination, and context to interpret what it all means. The bottom line: endemic corruption and lingering personnel and organizational weaknesses must be weighed against the Chinese Communist Party’s unrivaled ability to marshal resources and its ongoing production and deployment of advanced military systems on an unmatched industrial scale. Xi commands a system riven by brutal elite power struggles, but he is determined to pursue control over Taiwan with an increasingly potent toolkit. With deadly seriousness, he continues to advance sweeping organizational reforms to maximize relevant warfighting capabilities in fulfillment of his Centennial Military Building Goal of 2027, even at the cost of short-term churn and challenges.

Dramatic Developments: Nuclear Weapons, Manifold Missiles, Operational Options

Nothing looms larger than China’s determined advancements in nuclear weapons — arguably the ultimate military capability. By the report’s suspense date of “early 2024,” China already had more than 600 operational nuclear warheads, a surge from the more than 500 tabulated in last year’s edition. All of China’s roughly 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles can reach the continental United States.

China will likely have more than 1,000 operational warheads by 2030, most fielded on systems capable of ranging America’s homeland, many deployed at higher readiness. Stockpile growth will continue through 2035, which the Pentagon’s 2023 report projected “in line with previous estimates” and by which time the 2022 edition anticipated 1,500 warheads. […]

One of the most important questions that emerges from the Pentagon’s new report is: “How good is China’s military, and what does it all mean?” Part of the answer lies in the first and second of its three “Special Topics,” respectively covering the impacts of corruption in China’s military and political training in the force. The report’s early 2024 suspense date precludes it from including the latest personnel details, most dramatically the recent fall of Adm. Miao Hua from the Central Military Commission. However, the report provides ample context for understanding these important issues writ large. […]

This is the bigger picture that we lose sight of at our own risk. Revealing China’s weaknesses to deter and buy time is part of the strategy we need, but only part; we must not fool ourselves into complacency. The other part is recognizing that Xi is a man on a mission with a military to match and urgently shoring up defenses and deterrence while we still have time.