Chapter One: Defence and military analysis

wars under modern high-technology conditions’. The Kosovo intervention led to a study by China’s National Defence University (NDU). This study, analysts noted, highlighted the centrality of ‘information superiority’ and paid close attention to how NATO forces used technology to suppress Serbia’s command centre and telecommunications. China’s 2004 defence white paper reflected the lessons drawn from Kosovo, and perhaps also Iraq in 2003. China’s armed forces aspired, it said, to win ‘local wars under informatised conditions’, giving priority to ‘building joint operational capabilities’. The assessment of the white paper was that information connects military domains and acts as a force multiplier but could also lead to more integrated force development. China’s 2015 defence white paper assessed that China’s external environment was going through ‘profound changes’ and that threats were more diverse – and not necessarily local or indeed short term. China would, it said, take advantage of a period of strategic opportunity to build strong military forces. This white paper highlighted the increasing sophistication of long-range, precise, stealthy and uninhabited weapons and equipment, also noting that outer space and cyberspace were ‘new commanding heights’ in strategic competition. Ultimately, it noted, ‘the form of war is accelerating its evolution to informatisation’. In October 2017, Xi delivered a speech at the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress in which he set out a timeline for the PLA to achieve its modernisation goals. By 2020, mechanisation should be ‘basically achieved’, ‘information technology (IT) application’ should also have progressed and strategic capabilities should have seen significant improvement. By 2035, he said, ‘basic modernisation of our national defense and our forces’ should be ‘basically’ complete, and at the same time the PLA should have modernised their ‘theory, organisational structures, service personnel and weaponry’. By the middle of the next century (perhaps 2049, the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic), he said the PLA should have fully transformed into ‘world-class’ forces. China’s military modernisation has accelerated under President Xi Jinping. It is a central component of the ‘China Dream’, articulated by Xi in 2013. As part of this ambition, Xi has driven far-reaching reforms to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that have changed defence structures and led to the integration of improved military equipment, and which Beijing says will generate ‘world-class’ military forces by 2049. Three terms appear often in recent Chinese military documentation: mechanisation (机械化), informatisation (信息化) and, more recently, intelligentisation (智能化). Although the PLA has not clearly defined these concepts in public, they have been developed over time in successive defence white papers and are useful in understanding not only China’s motivations, progress and aspirations as it modernises its military forces, but also the PLA’s views of contemporary and future conflict. Some of Beijing’s efforts likely hinge on its capacity to introduce and exploit networked platforms, sensors and weapons that can support not only better and more integrated command-and-control (C2) systems but potentially also over-the-horizon targeting at extended ranges.