The Risks of Downplaying China’s Military
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- China's PLA has modified civilian ferries, developed self-propelled transfer bridges, and practiced launching amphibious armored vehicles directly from roll-on/roll-off ships — measures that mitigate the amphibious-lift shortfall flagged in the 2025 Pentagon report.
- China's navy fields more than twice as many combatant vessels as the French, Japanese, and UK navies combined, per the author's count, alongside the world's largest Coast Guard, maritime militia, and land-based anti-ship missile forces.
- China's missile forces include 550 intermediate-range and 1,300 medium-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching U.S. and allied regional bases, with Chinese forces practicing on mockups of those specific facilities, according to a 2025 Pentagon report.
- China's defense industry produces 800-plus offensive missiles annually and has developed what appears to be a fixed vertical launch system for large numbers of cruise and medium-range ballistic missiles.
- China's air base hardening program has constructed more than 400 hardened aircraft shelters over the past decade, compared with the 22 hardened shelters the U.S. Air Force has built in the region over a similar period.
- Chinese military doctrine explicitly treats deterring or defeating U.S. military intervention as a prerequisite for any island landing, meaning the same forces built for regional power projection are central to a Taiwan campaign.
- Adm. Dennis Blair's Foreign Affairs argument that China cannot conquer Taiwan underestimates the PLA's two-decade transformation, according to the War on the Rocks analysis.
Why it matters: Policymakers weighing Taiwan Strait deterrence now face a dispute over whether the PLA has achieved a 'credible path to success.' The article's specific asymmetries — 400+ Chinese hardened shelters versus 22 American, 1,850+ regional-range ballistic missiles, and a navy exceeding three allied fleets combined — reset the analytical baseline toward pessimism compared with sanguine assessments.
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