Joe Keary
It feels like we’re now living with a steady drumbeat of activity from China’s military that captures headlines and keeps analysts busy trying to figure out what it all means. Beijing’s latest offering, the 3 September parade, gave us striking images of a rapidly modernising force. But it told us little about the military’s ability to use these advanced weapons, or how confident its leader is in its human element.
Stories about China’s military are now a regular feature of foreign affairs reporting. In May 2022, a Chinese fighter jet released chaff ahead of an Australian surveillance plane, a dangerous manoeuvre that made us stop and think: what if an Australian plane were lost because of provocations from China’s military? Later that year, Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the United States House of Representatives, visited Taiwan. This triggered large-scale Chinese drills around the island, aimed at intimidating the government, people and international partners of Taiwan. Such exercises are now frequent.
This year, China’s navy sent a naval task group to circumnavigate Australia, showing that our distant continent is no longer out of its range. And this month, we saw what was described as the largest-ever display of modern Chinese military capabilities: soldiers, rockets, drones and fighters paraded past a smiling Chinese president, flanked by his closest international partners and friends.
Put all this together and commentators are quick to suggest that China’s military may be approaching or leading the US in certain areas; that the parade’s new technologies demonstrate China’s ability to seize Taiwan while repelling US intervention; or, more broadly, that it signals that Chinese President Xi Jinping is increasingly willing to use his military to pursue regional and global ambitions.
We already knew that China was fielding some of the most advanced military technologies in the world. Its missile capabilities likely lead the list. One of its military branches, the rocket force, has the world’s largest and most diverse inventory of land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, including new hypersonic weapons. China’s shipbuilding capacity tops the world and supports the largest navy by ship count. Its cyber, space and electronic warfare capabilities are all formidable.
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