China’s military marches on

The world was riveted on 3 September by Beijing’s parade of 12,000 troops from the Chinese armed forces, especially by their latest-tech kit on display.

This is a manifestly modern-looking army. But that’s not good enough for China’s communist party chiefs, for whom true modernisation requires unquestioning and instant responsiveness to party aims and orders.

The parade included 42 categories of new weapons including tanks; air defence missiles; anti-ship cruise missiles; anti-ballistic/anti-satellite missiles; autonomous land, sea-surface and under-water combat vehicles; and submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles. For the first time, the nuclear triad was assembled for public admiration: missiles to deliver nuclear warheads from sea, land and air.

Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, seemed to have delivered what the party’s military arm coveted: modern equipment that appeared to match the best of the West, meaning essentially that of the United States.

Modernisation is at the core of the CCP’s mission to change China, and the world beyond.

The party’s army naturally figures centrally in this mission, especially insofar as it means becoming capable of seizing and holding down Taiwan.

Such modernisation is not only about weaponry. It is about party control.

But while Xi has provided the armed forces with cutting-edge weaponry, key signs point to his lack of confidence so far in the process of modernising its top personnel.

If the armed forces were to become bogged down or even fail in an epic task such as taking Taiwan, many Chinese people might respond—this being the party’s army—by questioning the continuing authority of the communist hierarchy to which they have deferred for 76 years.

The military still lacks Xi’s personal trust, despite his public statements proclaiming that the army ‘has always been a heroic army that the party and the people can fully trust.’ He subjects it to constant organisational and personnel churn.

The purging appears relentless, even including generals who have ascended to the Central Military Commission, and who have owed their rise to Xi and appeared fully loyal to him personally. This marks the armed forces’ greatest point of vulnerability, raising questions about whether it can win sufficient trust to be deployed in major combat beyond the skirmishing in which it has been engaged in recent times.

Xi requires professional effectiveness to be matched by irreproachable political correctness. This frequently ends up with his doubting senior officers, even those appointed by him. He questions their loyalty, their competence or their honesty—or all three. Temptation, given the enormous scale of the procurement program under Xi, is considerable.

Top-down governance systems often create such dilemmas, even as they struggle to resolve them.

Xi said during his important work report to the 20th National Party Congress in 2022 that he would ‘comprehensively strengthen the party building of the people’s army to ensure that the gun will always obey the party’s command.’

The enmeshing of military and civilian industries via extensive technology exchanges—known as ‘military-civil fusion’ in China—has helped to transform the Chinese army from a territorial force into a major maritime power.

For Australia, the resulting concerns are manifold. These include how to deter the CCP from its ambitions for regional domination, and how to upgrade contingency planning to account, for example, for the risk of a conflict that could swiftly result in an economically disastrous trade freeze.

Many other Indo-Pacific governments appear to believe that despite China’s grey-zone fishing fleets and cyber destabilisation, their nations can continue to enjoy a net-beneficial relationship with China thanks to access to its markets and cheap products, as long as they don’t compete unfairly.

This view, common among regional elites, holds that greater engagement with China will provide insurance against its military ambitions. But China’s Global Security, Development, Civilisation, and Governance Initiatives, along with many other programs and relentless rhetoric, indicate that Beijing will not be satisfied with mere engagement.

The party wishes to advance everywhere, and its capacity to pursue key goals militarily is crucial for the credibility of this pervasive mission.

Xi has reached down to micro-manage the military so that it can extend China’s suzerainty over adjacent seas, push US forces further away and be ready to take Taiwan by 2027. The changes are intended to provide the party with greater functional control over the armed forces at large. Xi has reduced the former seven military regions to five theatre commands in order to integrate service operations within them. There is now greater strategic coherence.

But he warns that ‘without party leadership’, such modernisation ‘will veer off course, lose its soul, or even bring catastrophic mistakes.’

Xi can be a risk-taker. But any risk that appears existential for the party to which he has devoted his life may weigh on his mind, leaving him inclined against taking it.

However, under Xi, security has become a greater priority than prosperity in China, reflecting the Chinese economy’s troubles and the growing sense in Beijing that opportunity beckons to spearhead an international surge in its power and influence

Despite the hiccups, Xi is determined to press on towards full military modernisation—control—and it would be dangerous to underestimate such singlemindedness.

This article was published by The Strategist.