CHINA: PLA Military

The two-million-strong People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is the military arm of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) ruling Communist Party. The Trump Administration identified strategic competition with China and Russia as “the primary concern in U.S. national security” in 2018 and U.S. defense officials have since said that China is the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) top priority. 

According to a 2020 DOD report, the PLA has “already achieved parity with—or even exceeded—the United States” in several areas in which it has focused its military modernization efforts and is strengthening its ability to “counter an intervention by an adversary in the Indo-Pacific region and project power globally.” See also CRS In Focus IF11712, U.S.-China Military-to-Military Relations.

PLA Organization

Established in 1927, the PLA predates the founding of the PRC in 1949. The Chinese Communist Party oversees the PLA through the Party’s Central Military Commission, China’s top military decision making body, which is akin to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Central Military Commission also oversees China’s militia and China’s paramilitary police force, the People’s Armed Police, which includes the China Coast Guard. Xi Jinping, who serves concurrently as Communist Party general secretary and PRC president, has chaired the Central Military Commission since 2012. 

The PLA encompasses four services: 

• the PLA Army, 
• PLA Navy, 
• PLA Air Force, and 
• PLA Rocket Force, 
• as well as two sub-service forces, 
• the Strategic Support Force, 
• the Joint Logistics Support Force. 

China’s Military Strategy 

The stated goal of China’s national defense policy is to safeguard the country’s sovereignty, security, and development interests. The concept of “active defense”— the defining characteristic of China’s military strategy since 1949—prescribes how China can defend these interests and prevail over a militarily superior adversary. Chinese defense writings summarize the general stance of this strategy as “we will not attack unless we are attacked, but we will surely counterattack if we are attacked,” although the strategy does not preclude the use of offensive operations or tactics. 

Since 2014, China’s national military strategy (known as the “military strategic guideline”) has been to “win informatized local wars,” reflecting the PRC’s growing emphasis on what it calls “informatization”: the application of advanced information technology across all aspects of warfare. Military strategic guidelines have identified Taiwan (a self-ruled democracy over which the PRC claims sovereignty) as the “operational target” of military preparations since 1993. 

China’s defense planners anticipate that a military confrontation over Taiwan could involve “powerful enemy interference,” an apparent reference to the United States. China also has sought military capabilities to dominate its maritime periphery and to support foreign policy and economic initiatives globally.