Anushka Saxena
Military theory and combat work have, in the past few years, always been central to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s reform process. More recently, however, two back-to-back events have re-settled focus on these themes, amid a busy, foreign policy-oriented month for China.
The first is the Military Theory Work Conference (MTWC for convenience going forward), which took place in Beijing on October 14 and 15. This Conference is like another leg of military work conferences that take place through the year, and one of the first legs was the Military Political Work Conference that took place in June 2024.
At the MTWC, Xi Jinping gave a speech that covered the length and breadth of why technological revolution in the PLA matters, and how accompanying talent must be built.
From the Chinese perspective, there are three stages to the complete technological modernization of a military: mechanization (integrating machines to help humans), informatization (using the internet to connect machines and humans), and intelligentisation (making machines ‘intelligent’ and autonomous to relieve humans). These rather non-linear stages are critical to the making of a “world-class armed force” that can fight and win “short-duration, high-intensity, localized” wars. Clearly, technological advancement is at the center of each of these stages and war goals.
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