The System of Modern Military Force with Chinese Characteristics

It refers to the organizational form of China's modernized army under the new situation, that is, optimizing and reorganizing various organizations, personnel, weapons, equipment and other elements possessed by the state for the execution of military missions into a whole or system by adapting to China's national and military conditions and the laws of modern warfare. In 2012, the 18th CPC National Congress, on the basis of inheriting the CPC’s theory on the modernization of the army, proposed a strategic goal to build a modern military power system with Chinese characteristics. The leading collectives of the Communist Party of China have unremittingly explored the modernization of the army. For a long period of time, the building of a mechanized military force has been established as the core connotation of military modernization. Since the 1990s, the vigorous development of information technology and its extensive application in the military field have triggered the transformation of the form of warfare from mechanization to informatization and presented the era topic of what kind of modern military force to be built.

The Chinese armed forces are composed of the People's Liberation Army, People's Armed Police Force, and Militia. Among them, the Ground Force is mainly responsible for ground combat operations. The Navy is the main force in maritime combat operations and is responsible for defending the country’s maritime security, territorial sea sovereignty and safeguarding maritime rights and interests. The Air Force is the main force in air operations and is responsible for safeguarding national airspace security and maintaining national air defense stability. The Rocket Army is the core force of China’s strategic deterrence, mainly responsible for containing other countries’ use of nuclear weapons against China, performing nuclear counterattacks, and targeted conventional missile strikes. The Strategic Support Force is a new type of combat force for maintaining national security, an important growth point for our army’s new quality combat capability, and an important force for joint operations. The Armed Police Force usually undertakes tasks such as mounting guard, dealing with emergencies, countering terrorism, participating in and supporting national economic construction, and cooperating with the People's Liberation Army in defensive operations during wars. The Militia is a mass armed organization that is not out of production, is an assistant and reserve force of the People's Liberation Army and is mainly responsible for fulfilling such tasks as participating in socialist modernization, performing combat readiness services, participating in defensive operations, assisting in maintaining social order, and participating in rescue and disaster relief.

The basic elements for building a modern military power system with Chinese characteristics include: Firstly, adjust and optimize the structure of combat force.

Based on the characteristics and laws of winning informatized wars, adjust and optimize the structure of combat force in accordance with the requirements of three-dimensional offensive and defensive, reasonable coordination of land, sea, air, space, far, medium, and near capabilities and non-linear, non-contact, and asymmetric operations. Focus on strengthening the construction of the Navy, Air Force, Rocket Army, and Strategic Support Force, promote the overall transformation of the Ground Force, optimize the internal structure of the arms and the organization of the troops, focus on cutting down non-combat units and personnel, and enrich the frontline combat forces. The second is to strengthen the construction of new types of combat forces and accelerate the construction of new types of combat forces such as information operations and military aerospace. The third is to improve the system and mechanism conducive to joint operations, improve our army’s joint operation capability under the conditions of informatization, establish and improve the joint operation command system, joint training system, and joint support system, and strive to solve existing problems, such as information disconnection, difficulties in sharing information and inaccurate security.

The fourth is to promote the integration of operational elements, use information systems to integrate various operational elements such as reconnaissance intelligence, command and control, firepower attack, and comprehensive support according to the operational characteristics of the operational system, and maximize the overall effectiveness of the operational system. The construction of a modern military power system with Chinese characteristics reflects the new requirements of the new mission on national defense and army building and presents a series of new era characteristics.

In terms of strategic positioning, in light of the new needs of the national strategy in the new stage of the new century, it is a military power system commensurate with China ’s international status and adapting to national security and development interests; in terms of fundamental focus, it is required to complete diversified military missions and respond to multiple security threats due to new changes in security threats; in terms of action space, to adapt to the continuous expansion of today's military struggles, it must be capable of fulfilling its mission in multi-dimensional space such as land, sea, air, sky, electricity, magnetism, etc.; in terms of offensive and defensive types, given the new characteristics of operations under the informatization conditions, it is required to change from the traditional defensive type to the offensive-defensive combination type; in terms of scale and efficiency, to adapt to the new trend of informatized army building, the military power system must develop in the direction of being lean, united, multi-functional and efficient.

Therefore, accelerating the construction of a modern military power system with Chinese characteristics requires overall planning, overall design, overall control and overall promotion. At the same time, it is necessary to fully absorb the experience and lessons of the military informatization construction in developed countries. We must not wait for the completion of the mechanization construction task before engaging in informatization construction, but shall promote the compound development of mechanization and informatization, and take the military-civilian integrated development as an important approach to build a modern military power system. The proposal of “modern military power system with Chinese characteristics” endows new era connotations for Chinese army modernization, which is a profound summary of the long-term practices of national defense and military modernization, and further clarifies the strategic direction of national defense and military modernization under the new situation.