ABSTRACT
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was founded by the Communist Party of China on 1 August 1927. During more than 90 years of development, the PLA has undergone rapid transformation and now it targets building up a defence might capable of handling threats in multidimensional battlefields. The military modernisation program of the PLA began in the late 1970s and now it is focusing on doctrines such as integrated joint operations, information warfare, cyber warfare, integrated firepower operations, mobility, and comprehensive support to build itself into a strong military capable of realising the Chinese dream of a powerful nation.
The White Paper on National Defence 2015 notes that ‘In line with the strategic requirement of mobile operations and multi-dimensional offense and defence, the PLA Army will continue to reorient from theater defence to trans-theater mobility.’
The People’s Liberation Army is fast developing its strength and capabilities in critical security domains such as the seas and oceans, outer space, cyberspace and the nuclear force. It is advancing in the field of advanced weaponry and equipment. China’s well-equipped tunnel (the underground Great Wall), ‘interstellar’ weapons, carrier killer hypersonic missiles, and so forth are a few startling achievements in this direction.
Chinese defensive and offensive cyber strategy has evolved over the past decade as part of the PLA’s ‘Integrated Network Electronic Warfare’ doctrine and ‘Local War under Conditions of Informatisation’ concept. The PLA is working to improve battle space situational awareness by linking all the military branches into one common operating platform. The PLA has actively trained its forces in joint operations exercises that integrated its firepower in various live fire exercises, such as Joint Action (Lianhe Xingdong) in 2014 and later. In order to build a strong military, President Xi Jinping has recently initiated military reforms.
