interested in military access along the SLOCs from China to the Strait of Hormuz, Africa, and the Pacific Islands.
China seeks to strengthen its security ties through small-scale, in-country efforts to support domestic security. As of 2022, the PRC provides occasional personnel support at public events for the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force. In Africa, the PRC maintains an embedded PLA training cadre for local military forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a military training school in Tanzania. The PRC probably pursues such efforts in regions it assesses can help foster favorable environments for its security goals, but these efforts do not signal definite interest in overseas basing.
INFLUENCE OPERATIONS
Key Takeaways
- The creation of the PLA SSF in 2015 reflected the CCP’s understandings of cyber operations as the primary means for psychological manipulation.
- The PLA concept of Cognitive Domain Operations (CDO) combines psychological warfare with cyber operations to shape adversary behavior and decision making.
- The PLA probably intends to use CDO as an asymmetric capability to deter U.S. or third-party entry into a future conflict, or as an offensive capability to shape perceptions or polarize a society.
The PLA views controlling the information spectrum in the modern battlespace as a critical enabler and means of achieving information dominance early in a conflict. Beginning in the early 2000s, as part of the PRC’s overall influence operations, the PLA began developing the “Three Warfares” concept, which calls for the coordinated use of public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare. Public opinion warfare creates and disseminates information to guide an adversary’s public opinion and gain support from domestic and foreign audiences. Psychological warfare uses propaganda, deception, and coercion to induce pressure and affect the behavior of the target audience. Legal warfare uses domestic and international laws to shape narratives that advance Chinese interests and undermine those of an adversary. The PLA likely seeks to combine digital influence activities with the “Three Warfares” concept to demoralize adversaries and influence domestic and foreign audiences, creating an environment advantageous to the PRC.
From the PRC’s perspective, all nations—especially the United States—that use digital narratives to undermine the CCP’s authoritarian system in China employ offensive influence operations. Hence, the PRC considers its influence operations that counter this perceived subversion as defensive in order to protect the party and the military.
Another primary goal of the PRC’s influence operations is to maintain domestic stability and protect CCP rule. Domestically, the CCP uses influence activities to protect its image to the public
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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
