China's Military Modernization and Cyber Activities

China's military, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), is undergoing an extensive modernization program that presents significant challenges to US security interests in Asia. This modernization includes creating a surveillance and strike architecture that supports operations at longer distances away from China's coast. It makes the PLA a more formidable force in all the dimensions of war: air, space, land, sea, and in the electromagnetic spectrum. The PLA has new, multimission-capable combat ships, aircraft, submarines, and new generations of missiles.First and foremost, major elements of this program-such as the DF-21D antiship ballistic missile and increasing numbers of advanced submarines armed with antiship cruise missiles-are designed to restrict US freedom of action throughout the Western Pacific. The PLA is rapidly expanding and diversifying its ability to conduct conventional strikes against US and allied bases, ships, and aircraft throughout the region, including those that it previously could not reach with conventional weapons, such as US military facilities on Guam. As the PLA's anti-access/ area-denial capabilities mature, the costs and risks to the United States for intervention in a potential regional conflict involving China will increase. The Chinese military, of course, sensitive to nineteenth and twentieth century history, thinks of these actions as counter intervention strategies designed to prevent foreign militaries from intervening in China's sovereign affairs or territory.