Modernisation is at the core of the mission of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to change the People's Republic of China (PRC), and beyond—to 'set off a wave of modernisation in the Global South,' as China's paramount leader Xi Jinping has urged. This is all about party control.
This naturally incorporates the party's military arm: the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Xi has stressed that it means accelerating the PLA's development into 'a world-class army' capable of seizing and holding down Taiwan, which in recent decades the party has insisted is an integral part of the PRC, even though the PRC has never ruled it.
But while Xi has provided the PLA with cutting-edge weaponry, many signs point to his lack of confidence in the process so far of modernising its top personnel—of moulding them into fully responsive cogs in the great CCP machine.
That modernising mission matters intensely for the rest of the world—especially for the Indo-Pacific region—because the CCP won't be satisfied with eating China itself. It's also working to ensure that far beyond China—and beyond Taiwan, too—global institutions and trends, and regional seas and islands, are made safe for itself.
Many governments in the region appear to believe that, despite the PRC's grey-zone fishing fleets and cyber destabilisation, their nations can continue to enjoy a net-beneficial relationship with the PRC thanks to access to its markets and to its cheap products as long as they don't compete unfairly.
That view, which is common among Indo-Pacific elites, holds that greater engagement with China will provide insurance against its military ambitions. But China's global security, development, civilisation and governance initiatives and many other programs and relentless rhetoric reveal that Beijing won't be satisfied with mere engagement.
For the party wishes to advance—through PRC-style modernisation—everywhere. Its capacity to pursue key goals militarily is crucial for the credibility of that pervasive mission.
That means acquiring world-class weaponry, and 'military–civil fusion'—the enmeshing of military and civilian industries via extensive technology exchanges—which are helping to transform the PLA from a territorial force into a major maritime power.
For Australia, the resulting concerns are manifold—including how to deter the CCP from its ambitions for regional domination, and how to upgrade Canberra's contingency planning.
Xi has reached down to micromanage the military so that it can extend China's suzerainty over adjacent seas, push US forces further away, and by 2027 be ready to take Taiwan. The changes are intended to provide Xi and his party with greater functional control over the PLA at large. He has reduced the former seven military regions to five theatre commands, to integrate service operations within them. There's now greater strategic coherence.
Xi's functional goals for PLA modernisation by mid-century are: informationisation, intelligentisation, and the ability to win high-intensity wars through integrated operations and network-centric warfare across all services and domains. The modernisation process also seeks to deter the US and its allies and other partners from blocking CCP ambitions.
But, while proclaiming that the PLA 'has always been a heroic army that the party and the people can fully trust', Xi demonstrates constantly that it still lacks his personal trust, doubting the loyalty, competence and honesty of senior officers, even those he has appointed. He subjects it to constant organisational and personnel churn. Top-down governance systems often create such dilemmas, even as they struggle to resolve them.
This essay examines how modernisation has become the central project for China, and how military structures are being reshaped as a result. It then more briefly describes the impact on hardware, before considering the successes and challenges resulting from this modernisation model. Questions relating to capability gains and strategic intentions are subordinate to the issues arising from the core modernisation narrative.
