Pentagon Assesses The PLA Navy’s Modernization And Growing Aggression
The Pentagon’s annual assessment of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – entitled the 2023 Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China – was published on 19 October.
Gordon Arthur 27 Oct 2023
This eagerly awaited document was damning in its analysis of the Chinese military’s behaviour:
“Over the last 18 months, the PLA appears to have been engaged in a centralised, concerted campaign to perform these risky behaviours in order to coerce a change in lawful US operational activity, and that of US allies and partners.”
It highlighted an alarming trend of aggression as Beijing wields the PLA as a “capable instrument of statecraft”. The US DoD warned: “Throughout the year, the PLA adopted more coercive actions in the Indo-Pacific region, while accelerating its development of capabilities and concepts to strengthen the PRC’s ability to ‘fight and win wars’ against a ‘strong enemy’, counter an intervention by a third party in a conflict along the PRC’s periphery, and to project power globally.”
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/10/pentagon-assesses-the-pla-navys-modernization-and-growing-aggression/
