Military Missions and Tasks. The CMC directs the PLA to be ready and able to perform specific missions and tasks to support the Party’s strategy and defend the PRC’s sovereignty, security, and development interests. The PLA’s missions and tasks in the “New Era” include safeguarding China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, maintaining combat readiness, conducting military training under real combat conditions, safeguarding China’s nuclear weapons and its interests in the space and cyberspace domains, countering terrorism and maintaining stability, protecting the PRC’s overseas interests, and participating in emergency response and disaster relief.
Modernization Objectives and Targets. In his speech at the 20th Party Congress, Xi detailed PLA goals of enhancing party loyalty in the military, while simultaneously strengthening the military through reform, science and technology, personnel training, mechanization, informatization, and modernized military strategies.
In 2020, the PLA added a new milestone for modernization in 2027, to accelerate the integrated development of mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization of the PRC’s armed forces, which if realized could give the PLA capabilities to be a more credible military tool for the CCP’s Taiwan unification efforts. The PLA’s 2027 modernization goal aligns with the 100th anniversary of the PLA’s founding. During his October 2022 speech at the opening ceremony of the 20th Party Congress, Xi said that China intends to complete the plan to modernize the PLA by 2027. In a March 2021 speech, Xi detailed that the 2027 modernization goal is the first step in a broader modernization effort. PLA writings note the “three-step” modernization plan connects “near-, medium-, and long-term goals in 2027, 2035, and 2049” respectively.
The PRC’s goals for modernizing its armed forces in the “New Era” are as follows:
- By 2027: “Accelerate the integrated development of mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization,” while boosting the speed of modernization in military theories, organizations, personnel, and weapons and equipment.
- By 2035: “To comprehensively advance the modernization of military theory, organizational structure, military personnel, and weaponry and equipment in step with the modernization of the country and basically complete the modernization of national defense and the military…”
- By 2049: “To fully transform the people’s armed forces into world-class forces.”
The 5th Plenum communique holds that the 2027 goal means that the Chinese military should comprehensively push forward the modernization of military theories, military organizational form, military personnel, and weapons and equipment. PRC media, citing a military source, connected the PLA’s 2027 goals to developing the capabilities to counter the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific region, and compel Taiwan’s leadership to the negotiation table on the PRC’s terms.
Although China’s leaders view building military strength as a strategic imperative, they also place important caveats on these objectives. For example, Chairman Xi’s direction to the PLA to
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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
