China's military modernisation

This particular FYP outline contained no dedicated military chapter. Defence provisions were embedded throughout the document — an arrangement that perhaps reflected the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) insistence on integrating national security comprehensively into the broader programme of economic and social development. The operative language called for the PLA to “make major strides in the modernisation of national defence and the armed forces” to “promote simultaneous improvements in national defence and economic strength”, and to “build an integrated national strategic system and capabilities”. That last phrase became, across the five years of the plan, the defining shorthand of CMF — the idea that defence industrial capacity, civilian technological infrastructure, and national economic strength are not separate domains to be balanced against one another but a single integrated system to be built in concert.

The deeper strategic logic had been established at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee in October 2020, where the Party formally introduced the Centennial Military Building Goal 2027 (100th anniversary of the PLA’s founding on August 1, 1927) as the first interim modernisation benchmark. At the National People’s Congress on March 9, 2021, President Xi Jinping  reaffirmed that the three-step sequence remained intact: the 2027 Centennial Goal as the near-term milestone, “basic completion” of modernisation by 2035, and the achievement of a “world-class” force by 2049. In an article published in Qiushi — the CPC’s official theoretical journal — on August 1, 2024, Jinping was still more direct, writing that developing the People’s Army at a faster pace was a “strategic task” for national rejuvenation, and invoking Mao Zedong’s dictum that “political power comes from the barrel of a gun”, to underscore the Party’s absolute command authority.

What the 2027 goal required, concretely, was articulated around three core operational demands. The first was “strategic decisive victory” (PLA had to be credibly capable of prevailing in a high-end conflict, with a Taiwan contingency widely understood as the principal planning scenario); second, “strategic counterbalance” (an expansion of strategic deterrence sufficient to constrain United States (US) military intervention in the theatre), and finally, “strategic deterrence and control” (dominance in information, space, and cyber domains underpinning modern joint operations). Together, these requirements gave the 14th FYP its practical content: a drive to accelerate nuclear force construction, commission major surface combatants, field fifth-generation fighters at scale, and restructure the institutional architecture of the information-domain forces. PLA Daily captured the resulting sense of urgency in August 2025, quoting a soldier who said the 2027 goal was “right in front of our eyes”.

The financial dimension was substantial. Official defence expenditure grew at between 6.8 per cent and 7.2 per cent annually across the period, from approximately $209 billion in 2021 to an estimated $246 billion in 2025 — a near-doubling since Jinping assumed power in 2013. The US Department of Defense (DoD) consistently assessed actual outlays as significantly higher, between $330 billion and $450 billion annually, when accounting for items excluded from the official figure. The CMF mandate was reinforced at the 20th Party Congress in October 2022, where Jinping employed, for the first time, the phrase “defence technology industry” in preference to the earlier “defence technology innovation” — a shift analysts read as placing greater priority on industrial capacity-building over breakthrough research and development alone. As the plan drew to a close, an unusual signal emerged: in November 2025, Qiu Yang, deputy director of the General Office of the Central Military Commission (CMC General Office), published an article, urging the PLA to “live a tight life” — a candid public acknowledgement that institutional inefficiencies remained unresolved and that defence resource constraints would intensify.

The most consequential development of the 14th FYP period — and the one most at variance with external projections — was the scale and pace of China’s nuclear expansion. In 2021, the DoD estimated China’s operational warhead stockpile at around 350 and projected gradual growth. What commercial satellite imagery revealed from mid-2021 onwards was categorically different: the commencement of construction of hundreds of new ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) silos across three desert silo fields in Yumen (Gansu), Hami (Xinjiang), and Ordos (Inner Mongolia), representing the most significant expansion of China’s nuclear infrastructure since the programme’s inception. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) collectively documented approximately 350 new silos completed or approaching completion by early 2025 — a number exceeding the total silo-based ICBM force of the US. Chinese official sources did not comment on the construction programme, maintaining throughout that China pursues a “self-defensive nuclear strategy”, holds to a “no first use” policy, and maintains its forces at the “minimum level required for national security”.

Warhead production grew in corresponding steps. By mid-2024, the DoD assessed China as possessing over 600 nuclear warheads, with Sipri confirming it was adding approximately 80 to 100 warheads annually — the fastest rate of any nuclear-armed state — and projecting a stockpile exceeding 1,000 by 2030. The PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) achieved a qualitatively complete nuclear triad for the first time during the plan period. The DF-41 ICBM — assessed to carry up to three MIRVs (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles) with a range of 12,000-14,000 kilometres (km) — entered both road-mobile and silo-based deployment. At sea, Type 094A ballistic missile submarines were retrofitted with the longer-range JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile, enabling deterrent patrols from South China Sea bastions that placed the continental US within range. The DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicle was deployed in growing numbers, and the DF-26 dual-capable IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missile) force was substantially expanded. The September 2025 Victory Day parade publicly displayed, for the first time, the DF-5C heavy ICBM and the newly designated DF-61 (range of over 15,000 km, and MIRVs with at least 10 warheads); FAS analysis identified nine distinct variants of land-based ICBM now in service or development. In September 2024, China conducted a live test of the DF-31AG ICBM, described by Xinhua as a “routine” training activity, but widely interpreted as China’s first deliberate public demonstration of long-range ballistic missile capability in over four decades.

China emerged from the 14th FYP having moved decisively from a lean, uncertainty-based minimum deterrent to a large, survivable, multi-layered strategic force of a fundamentally different character. The DoD’s 2024 and 2025 reports assessed China’s hypersonic missile arsenal as “leading” in deployment scale among all countries. This transformation was achieved, however, in the shadow of an anti-corruption purge that struck the PLARF from 2023 onwards, removing Rocket Force Commander General Li Yuchao and his successor General Wang Houbin, along with numerous senior missile programme officials, and raising genuine questions about programme integrity that have not been definitively resolved.

In the conventional domain, the plan period’s most visible achievement was naval. China’s Navy, numerically the world’s largest at approximately 370 ships by the close of the plan period, advanced qualitatively as well as quantitatively. The commissioning of the aircraft carrier Fujian on November 5, 2025, at a ceremony in Sanya attended by Jinping and covered live by Xinhua and CCTV, marked the plan period’s watershed moment in maritime power. Displacing approximately 80,000 tonnes and equipped with three electromagnetic aircraft launch systems (EMALS) — a technology previously deployed only on the US Navy’s Gerald R Ford-class — Fujian represented a decisive technological step beyond its ski-jump predecessors Liaoning and Shandong. The Global Times described the commissioning as confirmation that China had become “only the second country in the world capable of operating EMALS carriers”.

The significance of Fujian was made concrete on September 22, 2025, when PLA-affiliated media released footage of the J-35 stealth fighter, the J-15T heavy strike aircraft, and the KJ-600 fixed-wing airborne early warning aircraft all completing EMALS assisted takeoffs and arrested landings at sea, with the PLA Navy officially confirming initial full-deck operational capability. The J-35 became the first stealth fighter in the world to perform EMALS-assisted launch and recovery at sea. Its land-based sibling, the J-35A, was publicly unveiled at the November 2024 Zhuhai Air Show, and declared operational with the PLA Air Force in September 2025. The J-20 production accelerated sharply: over 300 had been manufactured by late 2025, with annual production rates estimated at between 70 and 100 aircraft. The September 2025 parade displayed all five operational fifth-generation fighter variants simultaneously, including the J-20S — the world’s first twin-seat stealth fighter. On December 26, 2024, a tailless three-engine jet aircraft, widely assessed as the J-36 sixth-generation prototype, conducted its first observed flight.

Rounding out the conventional picture, the PLA Navy commissioned at least six Type 055 guided-missile destroyers during the plan period, each displacing over 12,000 tonnes and equipped with 112 vertical launch cells capable of firing anti-ship, land-attack, air defence, anti-submarine, and hypersonic missiles, including the YJ-21 carrier-killer. The Type 076 landing helicopter dock Sichuan, commissioned in December 2024, equipped with an electromagnetic catapult, became the world’s first amphibious vessel capable of catapult operations with fixed-wing unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs). In October 2024, Liaoning and Shandong conducted China’s first-ever dual-carrier exercise, operating across the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. Binding all these platform advances together was the doctrinal concept of multi-domain precision warfare, formally articulated in 2021, which envisages leveraging a C4ISR network underpinned by artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and strike key vulnerabilities in an adversary’s operational system through simultaneous, joint, multi-domain action. 

2027 centennial goals (Source: DoD CMPR 2024/2025; SIPRI Yearbook 2025 )

The most consequential institutional event of the 14th FYP period was the dissolution of the PLA Strategic Support Force (SSF) on April 19, 2024, and its replacement by three distinct arms reporting directly to the CMC. The SSF had been created on December 31, 2015, amalgamating space, cyber, electronic warfare, information communications, and psychological warfare into a single cross-domain force. After eight years, it was disbanded. Xinhua announced that the change would “improve information network warfare capabilities in an effort to fulfill the requirements of modern warfare”.

The three successor arms each absorbed a defined mission. The Aerospace Force took over the SSF’s Space Systems Department and assumed responsibility for all space operations. The Cyberspace Force inherited the Network Systems Department and took charge of cyber operations. The Information Support Force (ISF), a wholly new creation, was tasked with building and operating the PLA’s integrated network information system. Jinping attended only the ISF’s establishment ceremony in person, an unusual mark of priority, and instructed it to play “a crucial role in advancing the Chinese military’s high-quality development and competitiveness in modern warfare”. By December 2024, Jinping was quoted stressing the importance of “building a strong, modernised Information Support Force”, confirming its centrality to the new architecture.

Three converging imperatives drove the reform. First, PLA study of the war 

in Ukraine had reinforced the decisive importance of joint operational connectivity and exposed the systemic risks of fragmented command structures — a lesson the SSF’s integrated-but-siloed architecture had not resolved. Second, a centralisation logic: with the three new arms reporting directly to the CMC rather than through an SSF layer, Jinping gained more direct visibility and command of the information-domain forces. Third, the shadow of corruption: SSF Commander General Ju Qiansheng had disappeared from public view in 2023 amid apparent investigation, and former Defence minister Li Shangfu — who had previously served as deputy commander of the SSF from 2015 to 2017 — was expelled from the CPC in June 2024.

In February 2025, the CMC issued a further significant directive: the revision of the PLA’s Common Regulations — the basic laws governing all personnel — for the first time since 2018. The revised regulations incorporated combat effectiveness as the fundamental standard for all aspects of military development, emphasised combat readiness at every level, and reinforced CPC’s absolute command authority. The Ministry of National Defense described the revision as equipping the PLA to “fight and win wars”. In his speech to PLA and People’s Armed Police delegates at the National People’s Congress (NPC) on March 7, 2025, Jinping called for reaching a “successful conclusion” of the 14th FYP for military development, and addressed the corruption investigations directly — the first time any public NPC session had heard him acknowledge the purges. The announcement coincided with the simultaneous dismissal of several senior PLA congressional deputies.

Any honest assessment of the 14th FYP period must address the most structurally disruptive development of the five years: an anti-corruption campaign of unprecedented scope that tore through PLA senior leadership in multiple waves from 2023 onwards. Chinese official media was characteristically discreet. Xinhua would typically report only that an official had been “dismissed from public office and expelled from the Party” on charges of “seriously violating discipline and law” — a formulation that carries specific meaning in CPC usage but reveals little of operational consequence. The cumulative picture assembled by external analysts was considerably starker. By the close of the plan period, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS’s) ChinaPower Project had confirmed the official removal of 36 generals and lieutenant generals since 2022, with an additional 65 senior officers assessed as “potentially purged” on the basis of unexplained absences.

The purges proceeded in three identifiable waves. The first, originating in 2023, struck the PLARF and the CMC Equipment Development Department. Two consecutive Rocket Force commanders (General Li Yuchao and his replacement General Wang Houbin) were removed, alongside numerous senior missile programme officials. Simultaneously, investigations reached the defence industrial base: Tan Ruisong, chairman of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), was placed under investigation in early 2023 and expelled from the Party in 2025, and the lead designer of the J-20 stealth fighter was reported under investigation in January 2025. The second wave struck the broader PLA command structure in 2024, removing commanders from the Army, Navy, and Eastern Theatre Command. The third and most politically seismic wave struck the CMC itself: Admiral Miao Hua, director of the CMC Political Work Department, disappeared from public view in November 2024 and was officially expelled from the CPC in October 2025; General He Weidong, CMC vice-chairman and the second-highest-ranking officer in the PLA, was removed in spring 2025 and formally expelled on October 17, 2025 — the first sitting CMC vice-chairman to be purged since 1967.

The industrial consequences were measurable. Sipri reporting confirmed that revenue at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), China’s largest missile and aerospace conglomerate, fell significantly in 2024 and 2025 as a direct consequence of procurement freezes associated with the investigations. The Global Defence Integrity Index ranked China’s procurement score at 24, placing it in the “critical risk” category. The Fourth Plenum of October 2025 saw roughly one-sixth of Central Committee members absent, with most absentees from the military — a fact reported with concern by the analytical team of the Mercator Institute for China Studies.

The DoD’s 2025 annual report acknowledged the “short-term churn” brought by the purges, while concluding that China’s defence establishment “may well emerge stronger for it” over the longer term, assessing the PLA as making “steady progress toward its 2027 goals” throughout. What is harder to dismiss is the scale of the paradox. A leadership that presided over the most rapid military capability expansion in China’s peacetime history simultaneously revealed procurement corruption so deeply embedded — reaching potentially into the missile programme at the very core of its deterrence posture — that it could not be contained within the normal rhythms of Party discipline. The hardware achievements of the plan period are real: the nuclear triad completed in functional terms; Fujian commissioned with EMALS and a fully capable carrier air wing; the J-20 fleet exceeding 300 aircraft; the PLARF fielding the world’s most diverse ballistic and hypersonic missile arsenal; and the April 2024 restructuring demonstrating an institutional willingness to dismantle and rebuild under pressure. Yet the capacity question — whether the force that emerged can actually fight and win at the level of sophistication its doctrine demands — is one that no parade, no procurement budget, and no FYP can answer. It remains, as it has been since 1979, the central unknown in any assessment of PLA combat power.

The 14th FYP produced a PLA of substantially greater capability and strategic weight than it entered with. A functional nuclear triad, an electromagnetic carrier, a fifth-generation fleet exceeding 300 aircraft, and a restructured information-warfare architecture together represent a strategic transformation that few analysts predicted in full at the plan’s outset. That transformation was at a cost — not only in treasure, but in the institutional damage inflicted by the most extensive anti-corruption campaign the PLA has endured since its founding. The purges that swept through the PLARF, the defence industrial base, and the CMC itself have introduced uncertainties about programme integrity and command cohesion that will take years to resolve. China’s leadership appears to understand this: the signals from within the system as the 14th FYP closed — the call to “live a tight life”, the revised Common Regulations, the sweeping procurement reform agenda — all point toward a 15th FYP defined less by fresh capability acquisition than by the harder, less visible work of making the capabilities already acquired actually function as a coherent, joint, combat-ready force. Whether that work can be completed against the urgency of the 2027 centennial deadline will be the defining question of the years immediately ahead.