The Department of Defense (DoD) annual report to Congress on military and security developments involving the People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides a baseline assessment of the Department’s pacing challenge. The PRC has long viewed the United States as a competitor and has characterized its view of strategic competition in terms of a rivalry among powerful nation states, as well as a clash of opposing systems. As expressed in the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, ...Read more >

There is no simple way to introduce the challenges that China’s strategic presence and growing civil and military capabilities pose in competing with the United States. China’s capability to compete at given levels has increased radically since 1980 in virtually every civil and military area, and China has set broad goals for achieving strategic parity and superiority – although its timeframes and definitions of such goals are vague. Neither China nor the United States has published ...Read more >

Since 1990, China has used coercion for territorial disputes, foreign arms sales to Taiwan, and foreign leaders’ meetings with the Dalai Lama, despite adverse implications for its international image. China is also curiously selective in the timing, target, and tools of coercion: most cases of Chinese coercion are not military coercion, nor does China use coercion against all states that pose the same threats to its national security. The question regarding China’s coercion patterns– ...Read more >

The past decade has witnessed a series of “firsts” in China’s demonstrated ability to deploy military units of various sizes and types far from its own borders. In September 2012, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, a ship that made its maiden voyage into the Western Pacific in December 2016.1 In September 2013, a PLA naval aviation H-6 ...Read more >

First, I want to provide information in a single unclassified source for United States Air Force (USAF) personnel who have the opportunity to engage China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) in military diplomacy either in China or in the U.S. and for anyone else who is looking at the PLAAF for multiple reasons. Second, I want to write about the five things I care the most about, which are PLAAF organizational structure, personnel (officer/cadre corps and enlisted force), ...Read more >

Ballistic missiles are one of the most prominent parts of China’s growing arsenal of advanced weapons. CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has described the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) [中国解放军火箭军], primary operator of China’s missile forces, as the “core force of China’s strategic deterrence, the strategic support of China’s status as a major power, and an important cornerstone of safeguarding national security…the Rocket Force has played an irreplaceable role in ...Read more >

After nearly nine years in office, Xi Jinping now stands as the overwhelmingly dominant figure in China’s political system, having gained command of the military, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) apparatus, and diplomatic and economic policymaking, all while sidelining or locking up rivals to his leadership. His drive for power, however, has destabilized elite political consensus and dismantled power-sharing norms that evolved since the 1980s. By removing de jure term limits on the ...Read more >

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese state has asserted authoritarian control over many aspects of civil society. Yet there is evidence that Chinese citizens are continuing to mobilize and organize with relative levels of success. This article examines one mechanism that prevents the Chinese state from eliminating civil society: the political ideology of suzhi (素质), translated as ‘quality’ in English. In the post-Mao era, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has increasingly invested its ...Read more >

‘We recognise that China’s growing influence and international policies present both opportunities and challenges that we need to address together as an Alliance.’1 With these words in the December 2019 London Declaration, NATO leaders made clear that China has become a new strategic point of focus for the Alliance. Despite the careful language, this shift reflects growing concern among NATO members over China’s geopolitical rise and its growing power-projection capabilities, as ...Read more >

Based on separate analyses of 17 countries and EU institutions, this report concludes that Chinese soft power in Europe – defined as the ability to influence preferences through attraction or persuasion – has fallen on hard times. – Developing soft power has been a pillar of Chinese foreign policy and remains a stated goal of China’s long-term policy orientation. – We identify three prominent Chinese approaches to developing soft power in Europe: promoting Chinese language and ...Read more >

The Yangzi and Yellow Rivers race on without ceasing. In our vast land, time passes on. During 5,000 years, 180 years, 100 years, 70 years, 40 years, 8 years…as the wheel of time rolls forward, these points in history tell the story of the Chinese people’s vicissitudes in life and the glory of their ordeal. General Secretary Xi Jinping, from a deep historical perspective, has clearly noted that, “the socialist state and legal systems with Chinese characteristics has been formed over a ...Read more >

The Chinese government and its state-owned banks have lent record amounts to governments in lowand middle-income countries since the early 2000s, making China the world’s largest official creditor. Although several recent studies examine the economics of Chinese lending, we still lack basic facts about how China and its state-owned entities lend—in particular, how the loan contracts are written and what terms and conditions they contain. 1 Neither Chinese creditors nor their sovereign ...Read more >

I n his report to the 19th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress in 2017, President Xi Jinping called for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to complete its force modernization effort by 2035 and field a world-class military capable of fighting and winning wars in any theater of operations by 2050 (“Full Text of Xi Jinping’s Report at 19th CPC National Congress,” 2017). The PLA has ...Read more >

China’s actions, and its rapid emergence as a major regional military power, has led the U.S. to focus its military and strategic planning on China as one of two critical threats. Along with Russia, it has become the central focus of U.S. security planning in both the new National Security Strategy (NSS) that the President issued in December 2017,and in the new National Defense Strategy (NDS) that the Secretary of Defense issued early in 2018. ...Read more >

This report is an experimental net assessment that addresses China s emergence as a global superpower, and its competition with the United States. The report is entitled China and the U.S.: Cooperation, Competition and/or Conflict. The entire report, and the report is available on the CSIS web site in several forms: • Key sections are available on the CSIS web site in PDF form by clicking on each section title. The size of some of these PowerPoints may present problems for some IT ...Read more >