CHINA’S GLOBAL MILITARY ACTIVITIES
Key Takeaways
- The PRC has increasingly determined that its armed forces should take a more active role in advancing its foreign policy goals.
- As the PRC’s overseas interests have grown over the past two decades, the Party’s leaders have increasingly pushed the PLA to think about how it will develop the capabilities to operate beyond China’s borders and its immediate periphery to advance and defend these interests. This has led to the PRC’s greater willingness to use military coercion—and inducements—to advance its global security and development interests.
- In 2022, the PLA continued to normalize its presence overseas and build closer ties to foreign militaries. In 2022, Beijing maintained an active peacekeeping force of more than 2,000 personnel stationed abroad, conducted regular anti-piracy escorts in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia, continued construction of a PLA facility at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, participated in bi- and multilateral military exercises, and restarted in-person military diplomacy suspended by COVID-19.
THE PLA’S EVOLVING MISSIONS AND TASKS
In 2004, one of the “new historic missions” given to the PLA by then-President Hu Jintao was to support China’s overseas interests and diplomacy. The PLAN’s evolving focus—from “offshore defense” to “open seas protection”—reflects the PLAN’s interest in a wider operational reach. The PLAAF’s missions and tasks have similarly evolved towards conducting operations beyond China and its immediate periphery and supporting the PRC’s interests by becoming a “strategic” air force. Additionally, the PLA has embraced its concept of NWMA as an effective way to support and safeguard the PRC’s development, expand the PRC’s global interests, and gain valuable operational experience.
The PLAN, PLAAF, PLAA, and SSF have deployed abroad for counterpiracy, HA/DR, peacekeeping, training exercises, and space support operations. Within the PLA, the PLAN has the most experience operating abroad due to its far seas deployments and counterpiracy missions, the PLAAF likely has the most experience conducting rapid response HA/DR operations abroad, and the PLAA has the most experience conducting peacekeeping operations. The SSF operates tracking, telemetry, and command stations in Namibia, Pakistan, Argentina, and Kenya. The SSF also has a handful of Yuan-wang space support ships to track satellite and ICBM launches.
- Increasingly, the PLAN is operating outside of its home waters to places including the Middle East, Europe, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Latin America. The PLAN has also conducted submarine deployments to the Indian Ocean, demonstrating its increasing familiarity in that region and underscoring the PRC’s interest in protecting SLOCs beyond the
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OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China
