Review: The Chinese People’s Liberation Army in 2025 ( Source- The Diplomat / Author- Francis Sempa)
PLAN Destroyer Shenzhen ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Author- United States Navy) Source- The Diplomat Author- Francis Sempa In July 2015, the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute published a collection of papers under the title, The Chinese People’s Liberation Army in 2025. The book’s editors, Roy Kamphausen, a senior advisor at the National Bureau of Asian Research, and David Lai, a research professor of Asian Security Affairs at the Army War College, describe it as “an effort to examine the drivers, potential vectors, and implications of China’s military modernization for the near-to-medium future.” The contributors to the volume are experts on the Chinese military and the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region. The papers are grouped into three broad categories: (1) domestic, external and technological drivers of PLA modernization; (2) alternative futures for the PLA in regional and global affairs, including a weakened PLA; and (3) implicatio