New Quality Combat Forces Underpin Military Modernization

Arran Hope

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The last few months of 2025 have seen a proliferation of authoritative policy documents and commentaries discussing “new quality combat forces” (新质战斗力), a term that refers to the integration of emerging technologies with military capabilities. These include the Central Committee’s “Recommendations” (建议) for the 15th Five-Year Plan, a commentary on the plan by Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice-Chair Zhang Youxia (张又侠), 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” (先进战斗力), and its increasing importance to the Party’s notion of systems confrontation. [1][1]The phrase “新质战斗力” has no settled translation in English. Some, mirroring the common translation of “新质生产力” as “new (quality) productive forces”... 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.

New Quality Combat Forces Underpin Push for Intelligentized Warfare

The PLA has been discussing “new quality combat forces” for decades (FMSO Foreign Perspectives Brief, December 2024). But the concept has become much more prominent in PLA discourse following Party assessments that new and emerging technologies are beginning to significantly impact the nature of warfare. General Secretary Xi Jinping first used the phrase in January 2019 at the CMC’s military work conference, where he called for “increasing the proportion of new-type combat capabilities” (要加强新型作战力量建设，增加新质战斗力比重”) (People’s Daily, November 17). It received wider attention after the Two Sessions meetings in 2024, when Xi used it in conjunction with an analogue phrase for the economic sphere, “new quality productive forces” (新质生产力).