There is much to ponder in this latest report on the Chinese military. The sources of Chinese future military effectiveness lie less in numbers of missiles or ships than in how they intellectually and organisationally prepare for war. They have long been thinking about weaknesses in Western military systems, and ways they might influence or destroy the West’s military and national security systems.
But just as we possess weakness, so too do the Chinese. Their reforms, as a recent Japanese report makes clear, are not yet complete. And the Russo-Ukraine War has shown fragilities in pre-war assessments about Russian military prowess. These factors need to be kept in mind when reading the report.
Therefore, there is no need for despair in reading about significant improvements in Chinese military capacity in the 2022 Pentagon report. The nations of the West have proven before that they can find and target weaknesses in large authoritarian nations.
Our weakness is that much of our leadership is in the tank for Beijing, or at the very least admires and tries to emulate their authoritarian regime.