China's Incomplete Military Transformation: Assessing the Weaknesses of the People's Liberation Army (PLA)

Abstract : Since the mid-1990s, the People's Republic of China has invested enormous resources in developing the People's Liberation Army (PLA) into a modern force that can secure various national interests both at home and now increasingly abroad. The stunning U.S. victory in Operation Desert Storm (Iraq) in 1991; U.S. involvement in the 1995 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis; and U.S. military intervention in Kosovo in 1999, during which the United States accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, motivated Chinese leaders to invest considerable resources in the transformation of the PLA into a more modern, professional, and operationally capable fighting force. These conflicts bluntly demonstrated to the People's Republic of China that it lacked a military that could effectively fight and win wars against modern opponents, especially adversaries who could effectively harness the information revolution and successfully conduct joint operations. Although the modernization drive is now over two decades old and has yielded impressive results, numerous weaknesses persist. This report assesses many of the weaknesses in the PLA's human capital and organizational realms, in the PLA's combat capabilities across various domains (land, sea, air, space, cyber, and electromagnetic), and in China s defense research and industrial complex. It does so by examining how these weaknesses affect the PLA's performance of missions Beijing tasks or may task the force to carry out and by reviewing Chinese assessments of the PLA's shortcomings and their potential implications. This study should be of interest to military analysts, policymakers, lawmakers, or anyone interested in Chinese military affairs and their security implications for the United States and its allies and partners.

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