By Harry Kazianis
This week, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) released its annual report concerning China’s military. The report, Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China (PDF), highlights many of the main components of China’s military modernization and expansion, including technological achievements, areas of cooperation with the United States, force structure, and long term trends.
The report says China “is pursuing a long-term, comprehensive military modernization program designed to improve the capacity of China’s armed forces to fight and win ‘local wars under conditions of informatization,’ or high-intensity, information-centric regional military operations of short duration.” The text also interestingly notes that “(T)he character used for ‘local war’ can also be translated as ‘regional war.’ There is a debate over which translation is more accurate.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat