PLAN's submarine force faces autonomy issues due to historical distrust between leadership and boat commanders, impacting long-distance deployments. PLAN submarines historically employ senior officers as mission commanders for centralized control—a practice dating back to the force's early development—yet frequent and extended deployments strain senior officers,... MORE

At the end of September, the 2023 China International Automobile Exhibition opened in Tianjin. An official representing the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) delivered a speech, announcing that China's automobile exports are expected to exceed four million units this year (Kuai... MORE

Chinese President Xi Jinping (习近平) faces a dilemma. Around a dozen of his protégés have been found to be so corrupt that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary and Commander-in-Chief is no longer sure of the efficacy of the PLA’s trump-card weapons (BBC Chinese,... MORE

On September 6, the United Wa State Party, the political arm of one of the most powerful ethnic resistance armies in Myanmar, handed over 1,207 Chinese online scammers for extradition back to China (Eleven Media Group, September 9; Global Times, September 9). This was the... MORE

China has made significant strides in its ongoing contest with the United States to dominate the technological vanguard, especially in the military realm. One primary indicator of these efforts is the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) vigorous pursuit of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into its defense... MORE

The late summer has been an eventful period for observers of the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), where yet another round of purges of senior figures — this time, within the diplomatic and military bureaucracies — appears to be underway. Cursory inferential... MORE

According to the latest WeChat post from China's Ministry of State Security (MSS, 国家安全部), food security is a "strategic issue" [战略问题] — not for the reasons one might expect, but because of fears of foreign espionage (MSS WeChat, September 22). The post starts out with... MORE

Paramount leader Xi Jinping (习近平) has been widely blamed by foreign governments and media for failing to take effective measures to remedy an economy hurt by excessive leverage, weak exports, anemic consumer spending, and the massive withdrawal of investment by multinationals (Foreign Policy, September 6).... MORE

Supreme leader Xi Jinping’s failure to attend the G20 summit in New Delhi this weekend (September 9-10) — thus nullifying the possibility of a meeting with top Western leaders including American counterpart President Joe Biden — is symptomatic of the isolation that China is facing... MORE

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has come to recognize the important role of social media in modern conflict and peacetime operations. As such, PLA researchers have begun using the term “social media warfare” (社交媒体战) to describe the extension of non-kinetic military activities onto social media... MORE