28 December 2025

China: New Quality Combat Forces Underpin Military Modernization

Arran Hope

New Quality Combat Forces Underpin Military Modernization

Executive Summary:“New quality combat forces,” which refers to the integration of emerging technologies with military capabilities, are increasingly important to Chinese military modernization, according to authoritative policy documents and commentaries in Party media.
The concept is important to the Party’s attempts to design a national system that fuses economic progress and military strength into an overarching “national strategic system and capabilities.”
Technological progress is undermined by ongoing issues within the People’s Liberation Army, such as corruption, political unreliability, and governance issues.

The last few months of 2025 have seen a proliferation of authoritative policy documents and commentaries discussing “new quality combat forces” (ๆ–ฐ่ดจๆˆ˜ๆ–—ๅŠ›), a term that refers to the integration of emerging technologies with military capabilities. These include the Central Committee’s “Recommendations” (ๅปบ่ฎฎ) for the 15th Five-Year Plan, a commentary on the plan by Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice-Chair Zhang Youxia (ๅผ ๅˆไพ ), and other articles in authoritative media penned by military theorists and scholars. These pronouncements provide more detailed insight into what the term means, how it relates to other concepts such as “advanced combat forces” (ๅ…ˆ่ฟ›ๆˆ˜ๆ–—ๅŠ›), and its increasing importance to the Party’s notion of systems confrontation. [1] They also warn against over-indexing on technological development as a marker of military modernization, warning that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) still must improve in a number of other areas, such as cultivating personnel who are both technically competent and politically reliable.

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