What the Pentagon’s New Report on Chinese Military Power Reveals About Capabilities, Context, and Consequences
China’s military is both corrupt and increasingly capable. Yesterday, the Pentagon released its 24th China Military Power Report since Congress initiated its mandate in 2000, offering revelations unavailable elsewhere. The document reveals new details of the most dramatic military buildup since World War II, ongoing challenges that Chairman Xi Jinping and his party army are addressing with determination, and context to interpret what it all means. The bottom line: endemic corruption and lingering personnel and organizational weaknesses must be weighed against the Chinese Communist Party’s unrivaled ability to marshal resources and its ongoing production and deployment of advanced military systems on an unmatched industrial scale. Xi commands a system riven by brutal elite power struggles, but he is determined to pursue control over Taiwan with an increasingly potent toolkit. With deadly seriousness, he continues to advance sweeping organizational reforms to maximize relevant warfighting capabilities in fulfillment of his Centennial Military Building Goal of 2027, even at the cost of short-term churn and challenges.
Dramatic Developments: Nuclear Weapons, Manifold Missiles, Operational Options
Nothing looms larger than China’s determined advancements in nuclear weapons — arguably the ultimate military capability. By the report’s suspense date of “early 2024,” China already had more than 600 operational nuclear warheads, a surge from the more than 500 tabulated in last year’s edition. All of China’s roughly 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles can reach the continental United States.
China will likely have more than 1,000 operational warheads by 2030, most fielded on systems capable of ranging America’s homeland, many deployed at higher readiness. Stockpile growth will continue through 2035, which the Pentagon’s 2023 report projected “in line with previous estimates” and by which time the 2022 edition anticipated 1,500 warheads. Additional advanced nuclear delivery systems likely under development include strategic hypersonic glide vehicles and fractional orbital bombardment systems, the latter at least partially demonstrated in a 2021 test. These frontier efforts draw on potent dynamics, with the report judging that China “has the world’s leading hypersonic missile arsenal.”
Three new silo fields add 320 silos for solid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missiles. China is also more than doubling its DF-5 liquid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile force to likely 50 silos. As part of an effort to upgrade older intercontinental ballistic missile families, including with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, at least 30 new silos will hold the DF-5C. The Pentagon also anticipates possible silo and rail deployment of DF-41 road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, which have up to three warheads each.
Already, China’s rocket force keeps some nuclear forces on heightened alert. New silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, at least three early warning satellites, and Russian assistance portend movement toward “early warning counterstrike” posture — what the United States terms “launch on warning.” In 2023, China test-launched two intercontinental ballistic missiles from training silos in western China. This suggests at least some new silo-based units will assume a launch on warning posture.
As the second leg of China’s nuclear triad, Type 094 Jin-class ballistic missile submarines conduct near-continuous at-sea deterrence patrols. They can deploy the JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile, which can reach the continental United States from South China Sea or Bohai Gulf bastions. Type 094 production continues beyond today’s six deployed hulls, even though the improved Type 096 — to employ a submarine-launched ballistic missile with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles — is slated to begin production in the mid-2020s. The Pentagon allows for the possibility of 096 delays motivating the 094’s continued production, while alternatively positing “an effort to accelerate [China’s] sea-based nuclear capability as Xi has directed.” Xi’s rush to prepare for possible war over Taiwan on his watch supports the latter explanation. Rounding out China’s nuclear triad, the H-6N bomber can carry an air-launched ballistic missile, while an H-20 stealth bomber with a range of more than 10,000 kilometers is under development.
To rapidly build additional nuclear warheads, China needs copious plutonium. Moscow is literally fueling Beijing’s nuclear weapons production. Russia has provided highly enriched uranium nuclear fuel assemblies to China’s two fast breeder reactors, the first already completed. In one of countless fabrications that the Pentagon documents, Chinese officials insist CFR-600 reactors are for peaceful and civilian purposes. This belies the amount of Russian-provided highly enriched uranium China has received for these reactors, which is “more than the entire amount removed worldwide under U.S. and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) auspices in the last three decades.”
Beijing’s nuclear buildup reflects determination to have usable military options on every rung of the escalation ladder. The urgency to do so is amplified by perceptions that China faces military competition, crisis, and possibly even conflict with America — the last most likely regarding Taiwan. Accordingly, China seeks to deter American and allied intervention in a Taiwan-related scenario if possible and control escalation if necessary: “The [People’s Liberation Army’s] expanding nuclear force will enable it to target more U.S. cities, military facilities, and leadership sites than ever before in a potential nuclear conflict.” That overriding priority is the only sufficient explanation for the dramatic departure under Xi from previous relative numerical restraint in nuclear weapons.
Beyond the nuclear weapons backstop, Beijing’s “counter-intervention” strategy and multi-domain precision warfare operations overwhelmingly emphasize multifarious missiles capable of delivering a full range of conventional payloads to all conceivable targets. For example, China has simulated “Joint Firepower Strike Operations” against Taiwan, in part by live-firing PCH191 close-range ballistic missiles in its 2022 exercises, and drilling with the missile in its 2023 exercises. This precision missile system would play a critical role in joint fires during a Taiwan campaign. These drills similarly showcased significant maritime force readiness and surge capacity. Additionally, China’s four Type 093B Shang III guided-missile nuclear attack submarines, three of which may be operational by some time next year, may have land-attack cruise missiles — a trend likely to spread to major warships.
Given concerns about U.S. Navy and allied forces’ involvement, China has leveraged decades of emphasis on ballistic missiles into five different types of anti-ship ballistic missiles. China’s first anti-ship ballistic missile, the DF-21D, is capable of rapid in-field reloading. The DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missile variant can rapidly be swapped with conventional and nuclear land-attack alternatives—the DF-26 is capable of nuclear precision strikes, potentially with low-yield optionality. In addition to conventional anti-ship and conventional and nuclear land-attack payloads, China’s numerous DF-17s have a hypersonic glide vehicle to evade U.S. and allied radar and ballistic missile defense.
DF-27 ballistic missiles with a 5,000- to 8,000-kilometer range are newly deployed. In addition to their conventional anti-ship mode, they can carry hypersonic and conventional and nuclear land-attack payloads. Potential targets include Guam, Alaska, and Hawaii.
Finally, the YJ-21 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile has been test-fired from a Type 055 Renhai cruiser. China’s eight massive carrier-escorting Renhais merit special emphasis, with their advanced sensors and communications, as well as 112 vertical launch tubes accommodating multifarious missiles: land-attack, anti-ship, anti-air, and anti-submarine.
Across the Board: Pushing Frontiers in Power Projection
While Taiwan and other disputed sovereignty claims within the First Island Chain are clearly China’s primary military focus, it is simultaneously pursuing a “world-class” military — equal or superior to the U.S. military — in keeping with its 2035 and 2049 development goals. This inherently requires global reach and cutting-edge operations in all domains. For further details regarding China’s dramatic launch rates, orbited systems including satellites and space planes, and ground- and space-based counterspace capabilities of concern, readers should consult the U.S. Space Force’s “Space Threat Fact Sheet.”
The world’s second largest defense budget, which the Pentagon estimates at $330 to $450 billion, offers sufficient resources for comprehensive progress. China’s status as the world’s fourth largest arms supplier provides additional revenue. At more than 2 million active, 510,000 reserve, and 500,000 paramilitary personnel, the world’s largest military force has the people to cover its comprehensive missions.
China’s navy already has more than 370 ships and submarines (including more than 140 major surface combatants) — not counting the 22 Type 056 Jiangdao corvettes it transferred to the coast guard or the approximately 60 Type 022 Houbei missile catamarans it retains. The Pentagon forecasts 395 battle force ships by 2025, including 65 submarines, and 435 by 2030, including 80 submarines. The Office of Naval Intelligence’s continued lack of an update to its 2015 report on China’s Navy is a glaring omission that one hopes will be rectified soonest.
Rapidly approaching American technology standards, and finally powered by workable indigenous engines, China’s air force has 51 Y-20A heavy lift transports, whose up to 2,400-nautical-mile range may be extended by 16 Y-20U tankers. In addition to its base in Djibouti, where China stations 400 marines, it seeks bases and access points to extend its forces’ reach.
Conclusion: Corruption, Competence, Capabilities
One of the most important questions that emerges from the Pentagon’s new report is: “How good is China’s military, and what does it all mean?” Part of the answer lies in the first and second of its three “Special Topics,” respectively covering the impacts of corruption in China’s military and political training in the force. The report’s early 2024 suspense date precludes it from including the latest personnel details, most dramatically the recent fall of Adm. Miao Hua from the Central Military Commission. However, the report provides ample context for understanding these important issues writ large.
In its dedicated section on corruption, as elsewhere across its many pages, the Pentagon document does an admirable job of explaining what many all too often confuse if not actively misrepresent — “2027” is absolutely not a U.S. government construction or estimate per se, but rather Xi’s own grand plan: the Centennial Military Building Goal, a capabilities development deadline requiring China’s armed forces, inter alia, to give Xi a full toolbox of military operational options against Taiwan by 2027. The report rightly highlights the corruption-related investigations and removal of 15 high-ranking military officers and defense industry executives between July and December 2023. It speculates that this could have disrupted China’s 2027 modernization goals.
That statement should be understood in light of the tremendous military progress that the Pentagon documents throughout, which is clearly ongoing despite the impact of politicized corruption investigations and their imposition of costs on China’s military to the extent that some “dirty laundry” occasionally emerges — but they are fundamentally a speedbump, not a showstopper. With some of the world’s greatest military resources at his command, Xi is pressing ahead with determination. If Xi were not safely in command of China’s military, he would not have visited Spain, Brazil, Peru, and Morocco — or anywhere abroad—in November 2024. If there were prohibitive concerns about their disloyalty or disarray, China’s armed forces would not have been directed to conduct extensive operations around Taiwan just now. If the imprisonment of former China State Shipbuilding Corporation chairman Hu Wenming, who oversaw China’s aircraft carrier development program, and his general manager Sun Bo reflected fundamental defects in naval shipbuilding, we would not be facing the formidable armada hitting the waters today.
Despite all the drama and “palace intrigue,” we must never lose sight of an important paradox: China has the world’s largest bureaucracy to propagandize its greatest strengths while hiding (or at least dismissing) its greatest weaknesses. America, by contrast, ultimately bares all for all to see. It is an elementary analytical error to confuse the respective great powers’ “dirty laundry” with their “designer clothes.”
China’s “designer clothes” include some of the world’s most numerous and diverse missile systems, whose frontier technologies include some of the world’s most advanced hypersonic glide vehicles — a force to be reckoned with, by any measure. The relentless development and deployment of the impressive hardware documented throughout the report would be simply impossible if corruption and executive removals left China’s defense industry in disarray.
China’s “dirty laundry” includes endemic graft, pay-to-play, and other influence peddling, and its periodic weaponization in brutal elite political struggles, sometimes with direct impact within its party army. It’s not a bug — it’s an enduring feature of a system in which the party is inherently above the law. Admiral Miao Hua’s fall is but the latest example. There have been many others, and there will be many more. Indeed, given the way investigations tend to unravel personal patronage networks, some big new shoes may be dropping soon.
On the one hand, Xi undoubtedly faces elite power competition, particularly when he makes decisions that turn out to be unsuccessful or controversial (such as his longtime support of his former loyalist Miao). But on the other hand, Xi clearly continues to engage in ambitious military restructuring efforts that prioritize improvements in warfighting capabilities. These efforts would only be possible and desirable for a leader reasonably secure in his position and thus able to impose some of the most demanding requirements conceivable on China’s armed forces. A weak and vulnerable leader, by contrast, would be far more likely to “go along to get along” with superficial military showcasing and coddling of prominent military stakeholders, or a more “hands-off” approach akin to that of Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao.
The most sweeping, telling recent element of Xi’s continued defense reforms, as discussed throughout the report, is arguably his disestablishment of the Strategic Support Force on 19 April 2024 — the very force he created in 2015. He has reassigned its subordinate forces, the Aerospace Force and the Cyberspace Force, directly under the Central Military Commission. To these, he has added a new Information Support Force. These reforms are challenging, as the Pentagon explains in detailing their complex nature, but are required to give China’s military the best possible network and communication systems management to enable the successful prosecution of high-end warfare against the most capable opponent(s). The last is clearly what Xi is prioritizing.
Another revealing element of ongoing military reforms under Xi documented in multiple sections of the report is the transfer in 2023 of many shore-based units, including 300 fighter aircraft (e.g., all JH-7 maritime strike fighter-bombers) as well as all H-6J maritime strike bombers, from the navy to the air force so that the former can focus on carrier aviation, the latter on command and control as well as integrated air defense. China’s air force thus acquired fixed-wing combat aviation units, radar and air defense units, and related facilities that had long belonged to its navy, which surely opposed relinquishing them. Only a powerful, warfighting-focused leader would have the capability and intention to kick the hornet’s nest of interservice rivalry in the service of advancing unforgiving combat power.
In sum, nothing revealed in the report suggests problems sufficient to frustrate Xi’s pursuit of his top-priority target: military modernization to help assert control over Taiwan first and foremost. The purging of former Central Military Commission vice chairmen Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong in 2014 and 2015, respectively, was far more significant than Miao’s fall as a lower-ranking commission member. Yet in the decade since, China has attained the most dramatic military buildup since World War II, with definite improvements in organization and human capacity in addition to the “designer clothes” hardware that all but overflows from the report’s data-packed pages. The best explanation for all that the Pentagon, and we readers, can see is that Xi is accepting political and organizational risk up front to maximize his system’s strengths and his own ability to advance his larger goals perhaps somewhat further down the road.
This is the bigger picture that we lose sight of at our own risk. Revealing China’s weaknesses to deter and buy time is part of the strategy we need, but only part; we must not fool ourselves into complacency. The other part is recognizing that Xi is a man on a mission with a military to match and urgently shoring up defenses and deterrence while we still have time.
Andrew S. Erickson, PhD, is a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and visiting scholar at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. In 2024 he received the Navy Superior Civilian Service Medal.
Image: Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China.
