Chinese Military Strategy

Summary: Concurrent and commensurate with China’s emergence as a leading world economic power in the twenty-first century, the ruling Chinese Communist Party is adjusting the nation’s military strategy. China has published defense white papers laying out the nation’s evolving policy, including its strategic goals and the means to implement them. The paper insisted that Chinese policy was essentially defensive while laying out an expanded concept of defense to include issues farther away from Chinese territory, such as protecting sea lanes through the Indian Ocean leading to China. The US Department of Defense also publishes yearly reports on China’s military power.

In-Depth. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, China has been at a military disadvantage vis-à-vis other powers, notably Britain, Japan, and the United States. In the 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party leadership engaged in an extended debate over the role of China’s military and how to ensure that its armed forces adequately keep pace with the nation’s emergence as an economic power. The debate after 1997 led to the creation of the General Armaments Department and the Commission for Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense. These institutions reflected China’s determination to build an indigenous weapons manufacturing industry and to emphasize technological development related to defense. The government subsequently explicitly linked greater military power to economic growth. Later reforms reorganized China’s military into theater commands designed to improve joint operations across land, sea, air, cyber, and space forces.

In a speech to the 2009 National People’s Congress, President Hu Jintao called on the military to play a larger role in securing strategic economic interests, such as the flow of oil carried in tankers from the Gulf to China. Hu also called on the military to enhance its ability to conduct “military operations other than war.” These included counter-terrorism, maintaining social stability, building national infrastructure, disaster relief and rescue, participating in international peacekeeping operations, cyber warfare, security of space-based assets, and conducting military diplomacy (exchanges with the military leadership of other nations).

A Beijing newspaper listed China’s defense goals as:

• “Safeguarding national sovereignty.” This heading includes defending borders and territory and resisting separatist forces seeking independence for Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang (referred to by some groups as “East Turkestan”). It also includes challenging the military supremacy of the United States in the far-western Pacific in the waters off the Chinese coast, such as the South China Sea. China also indicated an interest in cooperating with Asian regional groups such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
• “Maintaining [internal] social harmony and stability.” This includes a military role in building civilian infrastructure, conserving and protecting the environment, and adopting a civil-military development model.
• “Accelerating the modernization of national defense and the armed forces.” The 2010 defense paper emphasized “informationization” (which it defined as “information-centered operations”) as the “driving force” of mechanization.
• “Maintaining world peace and stability.” This includes, for example, participating in international military peacekeeping missions, once almost the exclusive preserve of Europe and the United States.

Through the 2010s, China’s military strategy focused on the growing importance of Asia in the world’s economy and the relatively important role of China among Asian nations. Among the practical implications for the United States of China’s strategy is Beijing’s steady increase in its numbers of ships and in modernizing its fleets with newer ships. The latter includes developing an indigenous ship-building capacity that will include aircraft carriers, a key element in expanding the area of influence of a “blue water navy.” China’s policy divides Navy policy into two fronts. One is the Indian Ocean front, where the expanded Chinese navy will guard commercial sea lanes used to bring Persian Gulf oil to China, supported in part by overseas facilities such as its base in Djibouti. The other front is the far-western Pacific waters off China’s coast, including the Strait of Taiwan and the South China Sea, where China has conducted large-scale military exercises in the region, which have contributed to increased tensions. In the latter, China claims extensive maritime rights in areas of the South China Sea that may contain strategic resources, especially oil, although a 2016 arbitral tribunal ruled that China had no legal basis to claim historic rights to resources within the “nine-dash line” beyond the limits allowed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Those claims overlap those of Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, and Taiwan and have already led to clashes over the Spratly Islands. In case of conflict, China’s strategy for this area is “denial of access,” making it difficult or impossible for other powers, notably the US Navy, to navigate these waters. China has also expanded its missile forces and nuclear capabilities as part of its broader defense modernization strategy. Since 2000, the United States Navy has had several confrontations with the Chinese military challenging its right to sail in this area.

Building an indigenous weapons manufacturing capability is another part of China’s military plan, meant to lessen its traditional dependence on foreign suppliers, especially the Soviet Union/Russia. China also plans to establish a military judicial system and an integrated command system to improve the coordination of armed services. China’s economic development is critical to its defense initiatives because it supports the country’s military development, the modernization of weapons and equipment, and the ability of the country to engage in multi-country initiatives and training exercises. Because of this, the country engages in a military-civil fusion development strategy, fusing economic and social development to support a strong military.

In 2002, China began conducting exercises with other nations, and by 2018, the focus of these exercises shifted from counterterrorism to anti-piracy. Additionally, China’s military began conducting humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, such as providing aid to those nations fighting the Ebola virus.

The country’s defense strategy maintained a posture of “active defense” in the early 2020s and focused on “sovereignty, security, and developmental interests.” Its long-term goals include becoming a “world-class military.” Although Chinese officials do not explicitly define the term, US Department of Defense assessments describe this goal as part of China’s effort to build forces able to compete with leading global militaries.

Level of spending. As a percentage of Chinese government spending, defense spending fell steadily from 1998 to 2008, from 8.6 percent to 6.7 percent. In 2023, China announced its defense budget totaled 1.55 trillion yuan (about $224 billion), representing continued annual growth. From the early 2010s to the early 2020s, the Chinese military budget has grown steadily over time.

Bibliography

Babb, Geoff. “China’s Military History and Way of War.” Army University Press, 3 Mar. 2023, www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/Online-Exclusive/2023-OLE/Babb/. Accessed 30 Apr. 2026.

“China’s National Defense in the New Era.” Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China, www.chinadaily.com.cn/specials/whitepaperonnationaldefenseinnewera.pdf. Accessed 30 Apr. 2026.

International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Military Balance 2024. Routledge, 2024.

Jisi, Wang. “China’s Search for a Grand Strategy.” Foreign Affairs, 20 Feb. 2011, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2011-02-20/chinas-search-grand-strategy. Accessed 30 Apr. 2026.

“Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” US Department of Defense, 18 Dec. 2024, media.defense.gov/2024/Dec/18/2003615520/-1/-1/0/MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA-2024.PDF. Accessed 30 Apr. 2026.

“Pentagon Annual Report on Chinese Military and Security Developments.” USNI News, 18 Dec. 2024, news.usni.org/2024/12/18/pentagon-annual-report-on-chinese-military-and-security-developments. Accessed 30 Apr. 2026.

“The South China Sea Arbitration (The Republic of Philippines v. The People’s Republic of China).” Permanent Court of Arbitration, 12 July 2016, docs.pca-cpa.org/2016/07/PH-CN-20160712-Press-Release-No-11-English.pdf. Accessed 30 Apr. 2026.

“Tracking the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis.” ChinaPower Project, 8 Nov. 2023, chinapower.csis.org/tracking-the-fourth-taiwan-strait-crisis/. Accessed 30 Apr. 2026.

“2022 Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” US Department of Defense, 29 Nov. 2022, www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3230516/2022-report-on-military-and-security-developments-involving-the-peoples-republi. Accessed 30 Apr. 2026.

“World Nuclear Forces.” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, www.sipri.org/research/armament-and-disarmament/weapons-mass-destruction/world-nuclear-forces. Accessed 30 Apr. 2026.