Introduction: China’s Sweeping Ambitions for Building World-Class Military Power

The 2024 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Conference, cohosted by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), the China Strategic Focus Group at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and the National Security Data and Policy Institute at the University of Virginia, examined the implications of the goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to build a “world-class” military and assessed the progress of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) toward achieving this goal. Key questions the conference sought to address included the following:

• What is the CCP’s vision for the PLA as a world-class military, and how does it intend to use this force to attain other national goals?
• How does the CCP assess the PLA’s progress toward achieving world-class status, and how do corruption and talent concerns within the PLA affect this judgment?
• What role do artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies play in the PLA’s efforts to gain advantage in a new revolution in military affairs, and how well is the People’s Republic of China (PRC) fusing its economic and national defense systems to field these technologies to the PLA?
• How do the modernization and rapid expansion of the PLA’s nuclear force support the CCP’s goal of building a world-class military?
• Which PLA capabilities are already world-class, which are furthest from attaining this status, and what steps is the PLA taking to build world-class capabilities in the maritime, air, and ground domains?
• Regardless of whether the PLA’s capabilities are uniformly world-class, are they already sufficient for carrying out its key missions such as blockading or invading Taiwan, seizing maritime features in the South and East China Seas, and occupying territory along the Sino-Indian border?

Key findings from the conference include the following:

• The CCP’s determination to build the PLA into a world-class military force by the middle of the 21st century is intended not only to match the U.S. armed forces in terms of combat capabilities but also to enhance other tools of national power and support Beijing’s goal to catch up to and eventually surpass the United States as the world’s most powerful and influential nation.
• Twenty-five years out from midcentury, the PLA already boasts world-class capabilities in numerous warfighting domains, suggesting it may reach important milestones for building world-class combat power before it fully achieves other components of its world-class goal. Capabilities where the PLA is already world-class include its large surface combatants; conventional ground-based missile force, including hypersonics; cyber, space, and information warfare; surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles; and amphibious assault and high-altitude operations.
• The rapid modernization and expansion of the PLA’s nuclear arsenal in recent years suggests that world-class nuclear capabilities are essential to the CCP’s goal of building the PLA into a world-class military. Chinese leaders view nuclear capabilities as necessary for “counterbalancing and controlling” the United States, including deterring it from intervening in regional conflicts.
• Under the guidance of its military-civil fusion strategy, the CCP is leveraging its economic and technological advancements, including in AI, to support the PLA’s development of world-class capabilities. The PRC’s substantial industrial capacity in global navigation technology, autonomous systems, shipbuilding, biotechnology, and advanced manufacturing carries particularly consequential dual-use implications.
• Despite the PLA’s remarkable progress toward building world-class capabilities, it is not yet world-class by its own standards. Shortfalls in some important weapons systems, deeply entrenched corruption in the PLA and its defense industries, a lack of recent combat experience, and enduring shortcomings in personnel quality negatively affect CCP leaders’ confidence in the PLA’s warfighting capabilities and readiness to militarily confront the United States.
• Should the PLA achieve world-class capabilities by its own standards, particularly related to building world-class combat power, deterring Beijing from employing military force to coerce or even attack its neighbors could become nearly impossible.

As Beijing continues escalating its use of military coercion across the Indo-Pacific and leverages its massive industrial capacity to support military actions by Russia and Iran, the implications of the growth of the PRC’s military power are becoming only more concerning. By 2027, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, who also serves as chairman of the Central Military Commission, has instructed the PLA to be capable of invading Taiwan.[1] In July 2024, NATO labeled the PRC a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine due to its large-scale provision of dual-use components and materiel to Moscow’s war effort.[2] Likewise, critical chemical precursors and technological support that Beijing provides to Iran’s ballistic missile program helped Tehran develop the highly accurate missiles it used to attack Israel and U.S. military assets in the Middle East in 2025. Taken together, Beijing’s intention to use its development of world-class military capabilities to revise the territorial status quo in the Indo-Pacific and support its authoritarian partners in pursuing their own aggressive aims illustrates the PRC’s growing military threat to the United States and its allies and partners.

Amid these international tensions, it is essential to assess the PLA’s progress toward achieving its world-class military goal, the role that technological advancements play in the growth of PRC military power, and the CCP’s ambitions for using a world-class PLA to achieve its territorial aims, including when it might feel confident risking a military confrontation that could involve the United States. This PLA Conference volume provides in-depth analysis of the CCP’s intentions for wielding the power and influence of a world-class military both in the Indo-Pacific region and globally, the PLA’s development and fielding of world-class military technologies, and the PLA’s progress and continuing shortfalls in developing world-class capabilities in key warfighting domains.

A World-Class Military for a New World Order

The CCP’s goal to build the PLA into a world-class fighting force is inseparably linked to its far more sweeping ambitions to create a new world order with Beijing at its center. When General Secretary Xi announced his intention to build a world-class military by midcentury at the 19th Party Congress in 2017, he did not describe this goal in isolation from the party’s other priorities. Beyond building a world-class military, Xi called on the PRC to also develop world-class enterprises, universities, and academic disciplines. In this “new era,” military power would be one of many tools the PRC would wield as it strode toward the world’s “center stage” and built a “community of common human destiny” backed by its growing global power and influence over world affairs.[3]

For the CCP, a world-class military is therefore an essential tool for exercising its power in a new world order more closely aligned with Beijing’s interests and values. As Evan McKinney notes in his chapter in this volume, building such a force requires “far more than simply world-class combat capabilities.” Rather, it requires the PLA to help break the United States’ “values hegemony” and allow Beijing to set the standards for international military cooperation, redefine norms concerning the use of military force, and “shape international public opinion regarding international military issues.” The PRC’s latest defense white paper, published in 2019, reinforces this notion, declaring that a core function of the PLA is to “actively participate in the reform of the global security governance system.”[4] In recent years, Beijing has announced a series of initiatives to realize this vision. Among these is the Global Security Initiative, announced in 2022, which aims to establish PRC-led security dialogues and other initiatives as the premier venues for resolving global security issues and guiding international cooperation in areas such as counterterrorism, cybersecurity, biosecurity, and policing.[5]

Still, world-class combat power remains central to the PLA’s modernization goals. Moreover, the PLA may attain it long before it develops the other, more global features the CCP views as befitting a world-class military power. As a tool for accomplishing the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” a world-class PLA will serve an indispensable role in backstopping the CCP’s stated intent to annex territory around its periphery from Japan and Taiwan to Southeast Asia and India. Building the capabilities to militarily subjugate Taiwan will likely prove the most challenging set of requirements driving the PLA’s development of world-class combat power. General Secretary Xi’s directive to the PLA to be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027, to which some sources add building the capabilities to “counter the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific region,” suggests the PLA might intend to attain important world-class combat capabilities long before midcentury.[6] Similarly, routine operations and training to seize maritime features from Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, combined with its large-scale buildup of power-projection capabilities along the Sino-Indian border, imply that the PLA might believe it already possesses the requisite combat capabilities to execute these missions, at least absent U.S. military intervention.

To be sure, the PLA already possesses world-class capabilities in numerous warfighting domains. The PLA Navy boasts large surface combatants such as the Renhai cruiser and Luyang III destroyer, which feature 112- and 64-cell vertical launch systems, respectively. These systems are capable of launching cruise, surface-to-air, and antisubmarine missiles, as well as potentially land-attack and anti-ship ballistic missiles when naval variants of those systems become operational.[7] For its part, the PLA Air Force has developed world-class surface-to-air missile forces and beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles, while the PLA Rocket Force has devoted decades to fielding what is now the world’s largest arsenal of ground-based conventional missiles, including what the U.S. Department of Defense terms “the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal.”[8] The PLA has also devoted enormous resources to developing capabilities that offset traditional U.S. advantages, such as by building world-class capabilities in cyber, space, and electronic warfare. As Joshua Arostegui and Jake Vartanian argue in their chapter, the PLA also possesses world-class capabilities in key areas required for an invasion of Taiwan, such as amphibious assault vehicles, as well as for high-altitude operations against India, such as light tanks and truck-mounted howitzers. Lastly, Beijing is engaged in an unprecedented modernization and expansion of its nuclear forces which, according to Gerald Brown, aims to support the PRC’s territorial and other goals by “counterbalancing and controlling” the United States.

Despite the PLA’s remarkable progress in these areas, however, it is clear that the PRC’s top civilian and military leaders do not yet judge their military to be fully world-class. Central to this assessment is their perception that the PLA remains inferior to the armed forces of the United States, which emerge from PRC sources as the exemplar of what a world-class military should be.[9] This view was encapsulated in Beijing’s 2019 defense white paper, which assessed that the PLA “still lags far behind the world’s leading militaries” and is even “confronted by risks from a growing technological generation gap.”[10] The PLA’s judgment of its comparative inferiority appears to grow particularly acute relative to the United States, which the document alleges is “engaging in technological and institutional innovation in pursuit of absolute military superiority.”[11] Moreover, in addition to shortfalls in hardware and technology like indigenous jet engines, submarine-quieting technology, and air assault capabilities, the PLA suffers from endemic corruption, including in its weapons procurement system, and a lack of recent combat experience that senior leaders refer to as the “peace disease.” The force’s combat readiness is further weakened by outdated and sometimes irrelevant instruction in its training academies and a host of shortcomings in the quality and competence of its officer and enlisted corps, including what senior leaders refer to as the “five incapables.”[12] In the view of James Char, for these reasons “it will be a while yet before the PRC feels confident or competent enough to call into question the United States’ status as the incumbent world-class military power.”

The PLA’s unremitting efforts to overcome its weaknesses in pursuit of regional dominance and global influence make it essential to better understand the implications of its ambition to become a world-class military power. To this end, this volume takes stock of three key questions. First, what do Chinese leaders mean when they call on the PLA to become a world-class military, and is the interpretation of this requirement uniform across the PLA? Second, how do Chinese leaders assess the PLA’s progress toward building world-class capabilities? And finally, what are the most significant challenges the PLA faces in achieving world-class status ? To answer these questions, NBR assembled leading specialists from academia, think tanks, and government in the United States, Asia, and Europe, whose contributions to this volume will shape analysis on the PLA’s trajectory for years to come.

What Is World-Class? The PLA, Its People, and Its Problems

The opening section of this volume examines the CCP’s expectations for PLA modernization and benchmarks for achieving its world-class military goal. It also inquires as to how Chinese leaders assess the PLA’s progress in tackling long-standing challenges in the areas of corruption, loyalty, and personnel quality as evidenced in countless corruption cases against senior PLA officers and defense industry officials and in slogans such as the “five incapables” and “two incompatibles.”

In the volume’s first chapter, Evan McKinney argues that Xi aspires to wield a world-class PLA on the global stage as an increasingly active tool of national power commensurate with the PRC’s status as a global leader. Although McKinney acknowledges that the precise characteristics of a world-class military are not always clearly defined, he argues that such a military will play a significant role in Beijing’s exercise of both hard and soft power. Through a comprehensive analysis of primary source literature, he points out that Beijing’s intent to build a world-class military should not be misconstrued solely as a capability goal. Instead, this aspiration encompasses a broad range of military and nonmilitary tasks that the PLA will need to support as one of many tools of national power as the PRC more actively exerts its influence both regionally and globally. McKinney also refers to the PLA’s supporting role for the PRC’s development of “discourse power” where it will help enable Beijing’s efforts to dominate the information environment and shape global norms and discourse.

In the second chapter, James Char studies the endemic nature of corruption in China’s military and defense industries and its impact on Xi’s confidence in the PLA. Char attributes many of Xi’s removals of top military officials to political objectives such as eliminating political rivals, discouraging internal dissent, and consolidating authority over the PLA. By mapping the number of PLA officers and other security officials caught in Xi’s purges, Char uncovers a disproportionate number of officials working on political, logistical, and weapons procurement issues who have been the most significantly impacted by the sweeping campaigns. While the implications of Xi’s anticorruption campaigns for his confidence in the PLA’s warfighting capabilities are uncertain, Char concludes that Xi appears to be willing to trade “short-term instability” in the force for “long-term prowess.”

The third chapter examines the PLA’s attempts to improve the overall personnel quality and in particular the political loyalty and technical acumen of its officers and soldiers. Eric Hundman identifies numerous strategies initiated by the PLA to simultaneously reinforce political loyalty to the CCP and enhance military professionalism, including by doubling down on a commitment to political work and offering more educational and training opportunities. As a result, PLA academic institutions have intensified their ideological coursework while aiming to improve the living and medical conditions for military families. Nevertheless, the PLA continues to face challenges in successfully implementing some of these initiatives. For instance, efforts to standardize assessment programs for promotion have been met with some backlash from within its ranks, and training programs for officers to learn how to use new technologies are inadequate. Hundman concludes by cautioning against overestimating China’s military effectiveness on the battlefield without considering the limitations the PLA faces in its officers’ professionalism amid enduring concerns about political loyalty.

Strategic Technologies in a World-Class PLA

The second section of this volume assesses the PLA’s development of world-class military technologies and its integration of these technologies into its doctrine and fielded capabilities. Against the backdrop of a new revolution in military affairs, the chapters in this section examine topics ranging from AI’s role in next-generation combat systems and decision-making to the PRC’s military-civil fusion (MCF) national development strategy. They also examine how frontier technologies are reshaping nuclear deterrence dynamics as the PLA rapidly modernizes and expands its nuclear arsenal.

In the fourth chapter of the volume, Meia Nouwens challenges previous thinking on PLA assessments of AI to craft a new framework for understanding the PLA’s intentions to integrate the technology into its weapons and command systems. AI-enabled technologies enhance speed and accuracy, which are vital for command and control. They also serve a dual-use function, allowing the PLA to co-opt civilian AI-enabled decision-making applications for military use to train PLA forces and collate battlefield data for an eventual “command brain.” To inform her analysis, Nouwens tracks the number of AI-related contracts per PLA service branch and the number of PLA service branch contracts according to types of AI application. Drawing on these findings, she suggests that PLA analysts closely observe developments in these technologies to determine their potential military uses. She also finds that the warfighting applications of AI-enabled technologies increase the risk of miscalculation during conflict due to an overreliance on automated decisions, necessitating closer scrutiny of these technologies.

The next chapter examines the evolution of China’s military-civil fusion strategy and its subordination under the broader concept of the national strategic system and capabilities (NSSC). Liza Tobin, Addis Goldman, and Katherine Kurata investigate the increasingly central role of MCF in supporting the PLA’s growth into a world-class military. The authors scrutinize the mobilization of civilian state resources under the NSSC to advance the MCF concept, arguing that it is essential for the United States to clearly discern the motivations driving the PRC to leverage the industrial capacity and technological advancements of its ostensibly civilian economy for military purposes. The PRC’s openly articulated objective to transfer civilian resources to the PLA erases the distinction between technological breakthroughs for civilian use and those for military applications and presents the United States with particularly acute risk in the areas of global navigation technology, autonomous systems, shipbuilding, and biotechnology, and among others.

In the volume’s sixth chapter, Gerald Brown assesses the role of the PLA’s nuclear forces in attaining its world-class military goal. China’s nuclear arsenal has grown exponentially in recent years to over six hundred nuclear warheads and is now on track to reach a force of approximately one thousand nuclear-capable weapons by 2030. In addition, the PLA is incorporating new technologies like low-yield nuclear weapons, hypersonic glide vehicles, and fractional orbital bombardment systems to further strengthen and modernize its nuclear deterrent. Brown conducts an extensive review of Chinese-language sources to identify the primary drivers and goals of the PLA’s nuclear modernization efforts. According to his findings, the PRC is increasingly concerned that the United States might turn to nuclear weapons to compensate for its conventional weakness in the Indo-Pacific theater and has concluded that it must bolster its own nuclear capabilities in response. Perhaps more importantly, the PRC aims to use its growing nuclear capabilities as a strategic counterbalance against the United States in the context of intensifying strategic competition, evidenced in part by Xi’s promotion of the PLA Rocket Force to a full military service in 2016. Brown argues that as the PRC accelerates its nuclear modernization program, the United States might have fewer nuclear options of its own and could be constrained more broadly in intervening in a conflict over Taiwan.

Assessing World-Class Capabilities in Key Warfighting Domains

The final section of this volume uses a domain-based approach to identify where the PLA already possesses world-class capabilities, the challenges the PLA faces in becoming fully world-class, and steps the PLA is taking to address remaining capability shortfalls. Focusing on the PLA Army, Navy, Air Force, and conventional rocket forces, this section’s authors delve deeper into how each service is contributing to Xi’s vision to achieve world-class capabilities in key warfighting domains.

In the volume’s seventh chapter, Joshua Arostegui and Jake Vartanian measure the PRC’s progress in achieving a world-class military by pinpointing recent technological, educational, and organizational developments in the PLA ground forces. They highlight the U.S. military’s joint all-domain operation capability as a motivator for the PLA Army to match the U.S. Army in key areas while gaining advantages in other domains to make up for capabilities where it still trails the United States. The PLA Army has acquired modern land-domain systems that allow for greater maneuverability in complex terrain, advanced jamming systems to support land and air operations, and long-range rocket launchers to support the PLA Navy at sea. Some of these systems, according to Arostegui and Vartanian, can already be considered world-class. Further, the PLA Army is prioritizing training for its senior leaders to operationalize its new weapons systems and rotating forces to high-threat areas such as the Sino-Indian border to diversify operational experience.

In the next chapter, Christopher Sharman and Andrew Erickson examine the PLA Navy’s midcentury modernization ambitions. China already boasts the world’s largest navy by number of ships and submarines, the world’s largest shipyard infrastructure, and the world’s most productive shipbuilding industry. Nevertheless, Sharman and Erickson argue that neither Xi nor PLA Navy leaders yet believe their naval forces to be world-class. Through analyzing numerous internal speeches and documents from PLA Navy sources, they identify the service’s sweeping ambitions for building itself into a globally deployable force that is “more powerful than the world’s most powerful navy”—the U.S. Navy. As part of this objective, the PLA Navy seeks to be capable not only of fighting and winning maritime conflicts in the Indo-Pacific but also of projecting power to “win local regional wars” outside the Indo-Pacific and influence international maritime governance. Similar to the PLA Army’s modernization metrics, the PLA Navy uses the U.S. Navy as its primary benchmark for measuring its progress toward achieving world-class status.

The volume’s ninth and final chapter analyzes the modernization of the PLA Air Force’s and PLA Rocket Force’s conventional missile forces. Cristina Garafola and Elliot Ji begin by identifying milestones required for the PLA Air Force and PLA Rocket Force to achieve world-class status. They then outline four unique criteria to assess progress toward that goal that are applicable to both services: military theory, organizational structure, service personnel, and weapons and equipment. The chapter concludes that both the PLA Air Force and the PLA Rocket Force have transformed their hardware in recent decades but face continued challenges with it, as well as in technology, corruption, and personnel quality. Still, Garafola and Ji emphasize a number of key capabilities fielded by both services that they judge to already be world-class and assess that both the Air Force and Rocket Force will be instrumental in driving the PLA’s transformation into a world-class military in the coming years.

Conclusion

The nine chapters in this volume from NBR’s 2024 PLA Conference explore the PLA’s efforts to answer General Secretary Xi’s call to build a world-class military by midcentury. The first three chapters identify the ambitious vision behind this directive as well as some of the key challenges, such as corruption and personnel issues, the PLA will face in achieving it in the near term. The next three chapters identify critical technologies and policies the PLA is leveraging to modernize its arsenal, including AI, military-civil fusion, and cutting-edge nuclear weapons technology. The final three chapters examine the PLA’s remarkable progress as well as areas of continued shortfalls in achieving the goals of the PLA Ground Forces, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force to become fully world-class military services.

NBR is grateful for its sponsors and partners, including the China Strategic Focus Group at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the National Security Data and Policy Institute at the University of Virginia. Conference discussants, panel chairs, attendees, and keynote speakers, as well as NBR staff, including Roy Kamphausen, Alison Szalwinski, Audrey Mossberger, Jerome Siangco, Joshua Ziemkowski, and Jessica Keough, also deserve special thanks and acknowledgment for their contributions to the 2024 conference and accompanying volume.

Benjamin Frohman is Research Director for the People’s Liberation Army Conference and a Nonresident Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Jeremy Rausch is Director of the Political and Security Affairs group at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Endnotes

[1] Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom, “CIA Chief Warns against Underestimating Xi’s Ambitions toward Taiwan,” Reuters, February 2, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/cia-chief-says-chinas-xi-little-sobered-by-ukraine-war-2023-02-02.

[2] Amy Hawkins, “China a ‘Decisive Enabler’ of Russia’s War in Ukraine, Says Nato,” Guardian, July 11, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/11/nato-summit-russia-ukraine-war-china-enabler.

[3] The full text of Xi’s speech is available at https://www.andrewerickson.com/2017/10/full-text-of-xi-jinpings-19th-national-party-congress-work-report-related-documents.

[4] State Council Information Office (PRC), China’s National Defense in the New Era (Beijing, July 2019), available at https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Translations/2019-07%20PRC%20White%20Paper%20on%20National%20Defense%20in%20the%20New%20Era.pdf?ver=akpbGkO5ogbDPPbflQkb5A%3d%3d.

[5] Erik Green et al., “The Global Security Initiative: China’s International Policing Activities,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, October 24, 2024, https://www.iiss.org/research-paper/2024/10/the-global-security-initiative-chinas-international-policing-activities.

[6] U.S. Department of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2024 (Washington, D.C., December 2024), https://media.defense.gov/2024/Dec/18/2003615520/-1/-1/0/MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA-2024.PDF.

[7] Ibid.

[8] U.S. Department of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2023 (Washington, D.C., October 2023), https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/19/2003323409/-1/-1/1/2023-MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA.PDF.

[9] U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “2019 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,” November 2019, chap. 4, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2019-11/Chapter%204%20Section%201%20-%20Beijing%E2%80%99s%20%E2%80%9CWorld-Class%E2%80%9D%20Military%20Goal.pdf.

[10] State Council Information Office (PRC), China’s National Defense in the New Era.

[11] Ibid.

[12] These refer to “the inability of too many PLA officers to effectively judge the military situation, understand their orders, make operational decisions, direct troops in combat, and handle unforeseen battlefield developments.” U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “2019 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,” chap. 2, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2019-11/Chapter%202%20-%20Beijing%27s%20Internal%20and%20External%20Challenges.pdf.