China's Military Is Catching Up to the U.S. Is It Ready for Battle? The People's Liberation Army is emerging as a true competitor but Beijing worries about the ability of its troops

[Ubiquitous]

China’s military is emerging as a true competitor to the U.S. under Xi
Jinping.

The People’s Liberation Army now has hypersonic missiles that evade
most defenses, a technology the U.S. is still developing. Its attack
drones can swarm to paralyze communications networks. China’s naval
ships outnumber America’s, and it launched its third aircraft carrier
this summer, the first to be designed and built in the country. Its
defense budget is second only to the U.S.’s. China’s military has more
serving members, at around 2 million, compared with just under 1.4
million in the U.S.

The question for Mr. Xi, which he has raised in public, is whether
those forces are ready for battle.

China hasn’t fought a war since a brief border clash with Vietnam in
1979. Unlike American forces, who have fought for most of the past two
decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, China’s service members have virtually
no combat experience—which some Chinese leaders have referred to as a
“peace disease.” Finding a solution short of actual war has been a
priority for Mr. Xi, especially as he seeks to prepare the country for
a potential showdown with the U.S.

“We must comprehensively strengthen military training and preparation,
and improve the army’s ability to win,” Mr. Xi said on Sunday at the
opening of the Communist Party’s twice-a-decade congress.

The issue has become more pressing for Beijing as tensions build with
Taiwan, which China sees as part of its territory. On Sunday, Mr. Xi
reiterated that Beijing wouldn’t renounce the use of force in China’s
effort to take control of the island.

“The complete unification of the motherland must be realized, and it
will be realized,” he said, drawing loud applause.

Taiwan reported few sorties by the Chinese air force close to the
island before 2020. It says they have reached more than 1,200 so far
this year. After Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei
in August, angering Beijing, Chinese military aircraft began crossing
the median line between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland on an almost
daily basis.

Beijing’s state media reported an increase in more qualified recruits
to the PLA after Mrs. Pelosi’s visit.

Yet PLA publications say some officers make flawed operational
decisions, struggle to lead their troops and sometimes don’t understand
their own orders. Rank-and-file troops are caught in a top-down system
of command, potentially leaving them ill-equipped to improvise in
battlefield situations—a situation that has hobbled Russia’s military
in its invasion of Ukraine.

China’s political priorities mean that around 40% of new recruits’
training has involved studying about the Communist Party rather than
learning how to be a service member. Leaders, some of whom see young
Chinese as pampered products of the country’s one-child policy,
question whether they are tough enough to fight.
People's Liberation Army band members watched a ceremony that included
Xi Jinping at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People in 2020.Photo: Kevin
Frayer/Getty Images

An effort to make China’s different military branches work more closely
together—so-called “jointness,” which is considered crucial to modern
warfare—remains untested.

“At present, there are not many commanders in the PLA who are truly
proficient in joint combat,” one serving officer at the Zhengzhou Joint
Logistics Support Center wrote earlier this year in a commentary in the
PLA Daily, the military’s newspaper. “If this situation does not
change, once there is a war, it will be very dangerous.”

Outside analysts say the PLA appears to be making progress in bringing
forces together for more complex joint exercises, helped by interaction
with other militaries, especially Russia’s. Since Mr. Xi took power,
China has increased drills with Russia to as many as 10 a year from one
or two previously.

“We are observing an increasing complexity and sophistication in how
they are performing in exercises,” said Oriana Skylar Mastro, who
researches the Chinese military at Stanford University.

Mr. Xi’s ambition, according to China’s most recent defense white
paper, is to complete a modernization of the military by 2035 and turn
it into a “world-class force” by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the
founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Strategists outside China say the PLA’s short-range missile, air and
naval power is now so well developed that it would be nearly impossible
for other countries’ militaries to operate near China’s shoreline in a
conflict.

Beijing’s cyberwar capabilities are widely considered to be state-of-
the-art. The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
which advises the president on national security, said in a report this
year that China is almost certainly capable of launching cyberattacks
that would disrupt critical infrastructure in the U.S., including oil
and gas pipelines and rail systems.

Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on ballistic missile technology
mean that China can now put U.S. bases in Asia under threat. A growing
nuclear arsenal is providing Beijing with the means to better deter
rivals.

Reports of training missteps or incompetence occasionally surface in
state media. Like other militaries, the PLA puts together exercises in
which its own forces play the part of rivals. In China, these are known
as Blue teams, a color representing NATO. The PLA teams are red, the
color of China’s flag.

In one 2014 exercise in Inner Mongolia described in state media, the
Blue team decided to trick the Red team by sending around 20 troops
disguised as members of a friendly local government group, with
offerings of cabbages, potatoes and drinks.

It worked. The Red team brought them to their headquarters, where the
impostors pulled out weapons and captured the Red commander.

A PLA Daily account from last year described how the leaders of a
brigade were given night vision equipment ahead of an exercise. They
didn’t know what it was, and failed to distribute it to their troops.

Such mistakes aren’t exclusive to China, but they have fueled
insecurity among leaders, who have repeatedly used the phrase “five
incapables” to describe PLA failings in speeches and commentaries in
China’s military press.

The phrase refers to fears that PLA officers cannot judge situations,
understand higher authorities’ intentions, make operational decisions,
deploy troops, or deal with unexpected circumstances.

Another common phrase of self-criticism, the “two inabilities,” refers
to a perceived inability of the PLA to fight a modern war and the
inability of PLA officers to command.

Mr. Xi has been trying to rectify those problems since he came to power
in 2012.

In 2015, he launched China’s most ambitious military reforms in
decades. He overhauled the organizational structure of the PLA with the
goal of allowing its armed services—army, navy, air force and rocket
and support forces—to work more closely together. Such coordination
would likely be needed for major operations such as an invasion of
Taiwan.

Mr. Xi also expanded the PLA’s budget, created new special operations
units and stepped up efforts to draw in more qualified service members.

Beijing extended free healthcare to troops and their families, improved
military canteens and encouraged putting popular boy band members in
military propaganda to drive recruitment.

Central to the PLA’s issues, defense experts say, is a shortage of
high-quality talent, including for officers.

In the U.S., competition to get into West Point or one of the other
four military academies for officer training is intense. But in China,
average scores on standardized admissions tests for those accepted into
its military academies over the past few years fell well below those
accepted into the most well-regarded universities.

The lowest successful scores at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University
in 2021 were in many cases nearly 10% higher than at the National
University of Defense Technology, often referred to in China as the
military Tsinghua.

As a wing of the Communist Party, the PLA is subject to demands from
political leaders. In 2021, the Ministry of Education said the role of
the military was to provide jobs for young Chinese. Recruitment is
skewed heavily toward poorer rural areas, which tend to have lower
educational standards and higher unemployment.

Unlike the U.S., the PLA lacks a well-established system for bringing
in and retaining talented noncommissioned officers, the backbone of
most militaries. NCOs are usually high-school graduates who rise
through the enlisted service to help execute orders and manage the
lower ranks.

China has tried to make NCO roles more attractive. One program allows
recruits to continue studies at a college or vocational school for 2½
years before entering the military, and covers some of the cost, to
better qualify them for civilian jobs after military service.

Just over 20,000 students enrolled in the program in 2020, according to
official data, a fraction of the overall NCO corps. This year, China
said it would add better benefits.

Military analysts say the PLA does have some highly proficient service
members, including units similar to U.S. Navy Seals and Air Force
commandos.

Mr. Xi has intensified efforts to make military drills more realistic
and complex. Before he took power, exercises were sometimes seen by
outside analysts as little more than performances to make the military
look good. Now they more often provide some of the closest simulations
to real-world combat available, military analysts say.

Last year, the PLA’s air force and army took part in the first major
joint exercises with Russia inside China, involving more than 10,000
personnel. The drills included airborne troop assaults, drone attacks
and precision fighter jet strikes, according to official reports.

Dennis Blasko, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who was a
military attaché in Beijing in the 1990s, says force-on-force training
is usually held by the PLA for relatively short periods such as a day
or few days, which wouldn’t prepare it for a prolonged war.

The true test of PLA personnel will be when they’re called on to fight.
Some American military strategists and analysts say China might be a
generation away from having the ability and training in its military
that could effectively match those of the U.S.

“Our staffs have been doing extended combined operations for decades.
Theirs haven’t,” Mr. Blasko said.

Corrections & Amplifications
Xi Jinping’s ambition is to turn the military into a “world-class
force” by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s
Republic of China. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said
2049 was the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Communist
Party.

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