That's the message from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, at his 3 November Congress testimony on Pentagon's Report Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2021.
The Report links China's "Active Defense" military strategy to its trajectory to realize the China Dream of becoming a global power by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the PRC.
It highlights People's Liberation Army (PLA)'s rapid developments in mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization, its "Military and Civil Fusion Development Strategy" and its goal of achieving self-reliance in a host of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies. The PLA is also alive to the "Three Warfare Domains" - psychological, public opinions, and legal.
While focusing on national sovereignty and security, the PLA has been advancing readiness for land, air, maritime, space, counterspace, electronic, and cyber warfare situations. In particular, its Rocket Force (PLARF) possesses hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) - the DF-17, strengthening its Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities within and potentially beyond the First Island Chain (Okinawa and surrounding US military bases).
China's nuclear arsenal is expanding faster than expected, the Report says, accumulating 700 warheads by 2027 and 1,000 by 2030, with significant progress in constructing apparent missile silo sites in north-central China. This compares with the US shrunken nuclear arsenal of 3,750 weapons by September 2020.
The Pentagon Report reaffirms the objective of developing "constructive, stable, and results-oriented defense relationship" with the PLA.
Chairman Milley repeated his June 2021 Congressional testimony that China lacks full capability (or absolute confidence) to prevail over Taiwan by force before 2027. He therefore sees no near-term PLA intent to invade the Island, adding a caveat that the unexpected could always happen!
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