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.
This rise is driven by China’s civil-military fusion strategy: Xi’s signature policy that centralises and accelerates the use of civilian research and industrial capacity for military modernisation. To understand this, imagine a Sydney University lab developing quantum sensors that automatically feed into Royal Australian Air Force navigation systems, or Atlassian’s cloud services being adapted for Australian Defence Force command-and-control networks. While Australia has some elements of civil–military cooperation, in China the process is directed and comprehensive. That level of integration gives the Chinese armed forces structural advantages and helps explain the meteoric rise in technology recently displayed.
But there are also limits to what we can learn from parades and exercises. We still have only a partial understanding of how capable the Chinese military actually is with all this new kit.
Frequent exercises around Taiwan show that the navy can deploy troops and ships faster and operate in more challenging conditions, and that’s definitely impressive. But other events should give us pause. An 11 August collision off the Philippines between a ship of China’s navy and another from its coast guard raised questions about operational control. How capable is Xi’s supposedly world-class military if accidents like this can happen? After all, the Chinese armed forces haven’t fought a war since 1979. And what about the 2022 chaff incident? Was it the result of careful planning from Beijing or a pilot taking orders too far?
Xi’s ongoing purges of top military commanders also deserve attention. Corruption has long been an issue in the armed forces, but these dismissals may also reflect Xi’s doubts about military leaders’ ability to meet milestones: an ability to fight and win a regional war by 2027, and completion of basic modernisation by 2035. Despite the advanced technology, there are signs that Xi is still questioning the human element of his rapidly modernising force.
Another lesson from the military parade is how much these displays are aimed at domestic audiences. Xi frequently links military modernisation to the ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’, showing military strength as proof that the Communist Party is delivering for the country. Grand parades serve as a signal to the Chinese public that their nation is strong, modern and respected abroad. In this sense, displays of power are as much political theatre as military deterrence.
Ultimately, China’s military rise is a story of impressive technology and strategic ambition, but it is also a story of uncertainty. Advanced weapons, sprawling fleets and cyber capabilities may suggest near-peer status with the US in some areas, yet questions about operational experience, human judgment and leadership remain. Understanding China’s military requires looking beyond the spectacle and assessing both the tools and the people who wield them. Parades can impress, but they cannot answer the toughest questions about effectiveness and judgment.