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8 April 2022

Fight Fire with Fire: The PLA Studies Hybrid Warfare


Moscow’s recent escalation of its invasion of Ukraine has refocused the world’s attention on a war that began in 2014 with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its proxy war against Kyiv in eastern Ukraine. Russia’s successes in Ukraine in 2014 and the subsequent panic over Russian interference in Western democracies’ elections made “hybrid warfare,” the supposedly new form of warfare that Russia pioneered, a term that is commonly used but is often only vaguely understood.

The Chinese Communist Party’s military, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), recently sought to impart to its rank-and-file a proper understanding of hybrid warfare by publishing a series of articles in its official newspaper. The articles were not the first concerning hybrid warfare that the newspaper has published, but the series is significant because such series are rare. The series was clearly meant to be studied by the entire PLA, so it represents the most authoritative explanation of the PLA’s conception of hybrid warfare that has been openly published.

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