China’s Military Seeks to ‘Dominate’ American Systems, Displace US Internationally: Pentagon Report

Chinese J-20 stealth fighters of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) perform at the Airshow China 2022 in Zhuhai, in southern China's Guangdong Province, on Nov. 8, 2022. CNS/AFP via Getty Images

China’s communist regime is developing its military to win a war against the United States by overwhelming its electronic, information, and logistical systems, according to an annual report by the Pentagon.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to “fight and win wars” against a “strong enemy,” a term the regime frequently uses as a euphemism for the United States, according to the Pentagon’s China Military Power Report, released on Nov. 29. To do that, the regime is expanding its global military presence and adopting technologies and doctrines aimed at preventing the United States from intervening in any wars that it starts.

The report, which examines the CCP’s “way of war,” found that the regime is doubling down on systems-based warfare and increasing its “non-war military activities” to weaken the United States without overt, kinetic conflict.

Information Domination

The CCP’s massive military modernization and expansion is no secret. Its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), now boasts 2.2 million active-duty military service members and 660,000 paramilitary personnel, as well as 340 ships and submarines and more than 2,800 aircraft.

Despite its size, the CCP is developing the PLA to engage heavily in domains not traditionally associated with combat, including electronic, information, and psychological warfare.

Military delegates stand in formation after the commemoration of the 110th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty and led to the founding of communist China, in Beijing, on Oct. 9, 2021. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

“The PLA considers information operations (IO) as a means of achieving information dominance early in a conflict, and continues to expand the scope and frequency of IO in military exercises,” the report reads.

A similar effort focusing on electronic and information warfare is the regime’s “multi-domain precision warfare” (MDPW), which seeks to deny adversaries such as the United States access to vital regions and systems by using state-of-the-art technology, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and to launch pinpoint counterattacks on vital U.S. infrastructure. This strategy folds domains such as electronic and psychological warfare together with traditional domains of war, such as sea, land, and air capabilities, to create a holistic framework for conducting war.

The report describes the CCP’s MDPW strategy as a “network information system-of-systems that incorporates advances in big data and artificial intelligence to rapidly identify key vulnerabilities in the U.S. operational system and then combine joint forces across domains to launch precision strikes against those vulnerabilities.”

To do that, the regime is attempting to “informatize” its forces to ensure maximum cohesion between troops and network systems.

“Chairman Xi Jinping has called for the PLA to create a highly informatized force capable of dominating all networks and expanding the country’s security and development interests,” the report reads.

“PRC [People’s Republic of China] military writings describe informatized warfare as the use of information technology to create an operational system-of-systems, which would enable the PLA to acquire, transmit, process, and use information during a conflict to conduct joint military operations across the ground, maritime, air, space, cyberspace, and electromagnetic spectrum domains.”

Related to this strategy, according to the report, is an emergent Chinese military doctrine described as “systems destruction warfare,” which prioritizes the destruction of vital systems rather than the total destruction of enemy combatants. In the next war, the thinking goes, destroying “military and critical infrastructure systems” will be equally if not more decisive than killing combatants.

China Isn’t Aiming for 2nd Place

One reason for this shift in doctrine, aside from the goal of overcoming the relative U.S. technological advantage, is to create “international conditions” that are conducive to the regime’s aspiration to build a “great modern socialist country,” the report states.

CCP leaders believe that global activities, including growing its global military presence, contribute to its efforts to create a “favorable” international environment for its national rejuvenation project, through which it seeks to displace the United States as the chief superpower in the world. Such efforts, the report found, include the expansion of the regime’s overseas military and paramilitary presence, as well as the proliferation of its own technologies and related supply chains.

To that end, the report states that the CCP is likely considering several locations for new overseas military bases and ports to expand its reach and contest the international supremacy of the United States.

“The PRC has likely considered Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Equatorial Guinea, Seychelles, Tanzania, Angola, and Tajikistan, among other places, as locations for PLA military logistics facilities,” the report reads.

The ultimate aim of the regime’s military development and corollary expansion is to eject the United States from the Indo-Pacific, displace it as the world superpower, and seize the levers of power necessary to increase its control over global events.

“Within the context of China’s national strategy, however, it is likely that the PRC will seek to develop a military by mid-century that is equal to—or in some cases superior to—the U.S. military, and that of any other great power that Beijing views as a threat to its sovereignty, security, and development interests,” the report reads.

“Given the far-reaching ambitions the CCP has for a rejuvenated China, it is unlikely that the Party would aim for an end state in which the PRC would remain in a position of military inferiority vis-à-vis the United States or any other potential rival.”