People’s Liberation Army (PLA) special operations forces (SOF) are considered among the “new type” units receiving priority for development (Information Office of the State Council, April 16, 2013). With their roots in pre-existing reconnaissance units, the first PLA SOF units were formed after the 1991... MORE

Global outreach is the inevitable course for China’s forces to deal with various threats and to fulfill multiple tasks in the process of realizing the “Chinese Dream” and a strong military. China’s armed forces accelerated their global interactions in 2013. Chinese forces have appeared in... MORE

One of the key factors for the Obama administration to pursue in its “Rebalance to Asia” policy is to deal with current and potential security challenges posed by North Korean nuclear and missile threats. Another factor is Chinese expansion of air and naval activities, both... MORE

The Ukraine crisis has brought Russia and China much closer together (see EDM, April 3). But Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s trip to Southeast Asia—Thailand and then Vietnam—in early April 2015, suggests that Moscow is simultaneously hedging against China, as Beijing is visibly trying to... MORE

In June 2011, Militant Leadership Monitor profiled the Malaysian-born and U.S. educated veteran of the 1990s civil war in Afghanistan, Zulkifli bin Hir (a.k.a. Marwan). In 2011, he was considered to be the highest-ranking of the estimated 20-30 Jemaah Islamiya (JI) fighters in the Philippines.... MORE

Deputy ministers of railway and transportation from Mongolia, China and Russia met, on April 9–10, in Ulaanbaatar, for their first consultative meeting since a tripartite summit among the presidents of the three countries in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in September 2014 (see China Brief, September 25, 2014).... MORE

The much-heralded arrival of the Yixinou train in Madrid last December, after traveling 8,000 miles from Yiwu, China, encapsulated the rapid expansion of China’s railway network across Eurasia and the key role that railroads are playing in Beijing’s New Silk Road strategy (Xinhua, December 9,... MORE

When tracking the development of China’s military capabilities, Western People’s Liberation Army (PLA) watchers encounter frequent challenges in determining which data sources they should draw upon for their analysis. Purely quantitative measurements of the PLA’s nominal force strength, though often valuable, may not provide insights... MORE

China pursues a strategy of aggressive cyberspace management and is in the midst of fostering a military cyber force to further the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) primary interest: to stay in power. Secondary considerations that directly or indirectly support the continuation of CCP rule include... MORE

This paper seeks to examine the intersection of Chinese thought on cyber, space and electronic warfare, particularly in the context of command, control, computers, communication, intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (C4ISR) complexes and their use in the current military paradigm. Space warfare is still in a... MORE