EVENTS

China’s People’s Liberation Army has recently established three support forces, viz, the Information Support Force, the Cyberspace Force, and the Military Aerospace Force. These specialised units were created to establish the military’s dominance over the “three strategic commanding heights” in new-age warfare. They are characterised by three key opportunities and challenges. To begin with, consolidating the PLA’s Cyberspace and Information Support Forces centralises offensive cyber and electromagnetic warfare expertise, potentially streamlining tactics and enhancing operational sophistication, while simultaneously heightening the risk of unintended escalation and blurring the distinction between peacetime and wartime activities. Secondly, despite reorganisation, the PLA faces persistent challenges integrating diverse services and theaters. Technological obsolescence, resource management, and personnel informational adaptability remain key vulnerabilities, especially for network-centric operations and in high-stress combat environments. Lastly, while the Aerospace Force’s modernisation underscores China’s ambition to counter US capabilities in space and missile domains, ongoing issues with equipment maintenance, infrastructure protection, as well as corruption, will likely continue to plague force credibility and operational effectiveness, exposing these new forces to both internal and external pressures.

Speaker

Anushka Saxena is a Staff Research Analyst with the Indo-Pacific Studies Programme at the Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru, India. She is also a Doctoral Research Scholar at the Manipal Institute of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal. Her research focuses on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and its reforms, China-Taiwan Relations, and India’s Foreign Policy. She has previously written for national dailies such as The Hindu, The Times of India, and The Indian Express. She also curates the weekly Newsletter, ‘Eye on China’. She has obtained her Master’s degree in International Relations from the O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, in 2023.

Chair

M V Rappai is a Delhi based security analyst specialising in Asian Strategic issues. He worked with the Ministry of Defence, Government of India and later on joined the MP-IDSA as a Research Fellow (1996 - 2002). He is currently associated with the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi and has published chapters in books and articles in reputed journals and newspapers. Rappai holds a P G Diploma in Chinese language from the School of Foreign Languages, New Delhi, his areas of interest are security strategy of China, Communist Party of China, Armed Forces, and India-China relations.

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