A report assessing the PLA's capabilities and entitled "China's Incomplete Military Transformation: Assessing the Weaknesses of the People's Liberation Army "commissioned by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) was released on February 11, 2015. The report outlines the various Achilles' heels of the Chinese military. It asserts that preservation of the CCP will remain the top priority of the party, state, and military leadership, and the CCP will remain in control of the PLA. It adds that "Despite its verbal and sometimes physical aggressiveness, the CCP tends to avoid conflict and wants to sustain a peacetime environment to ensure the strength of another pillar of legitimacy — economic development."
The report looks at two critical shortcomings: institutional and combat capabilities. It states that on institutional issues, the PLA faces shortcomings regarding outdated command structures, quality of personnel, professionalism and corruption. Combat weaknesses include logistical, insufficient strategic airlift capabilities, limited numbers of special-mission aircraft, and deficiencies in fleet air defense and anti-submarine warfare.
The report sifted through over 300 Chinese-language articles from CCP publications, along with numerous books and studies, including important books on strategic missile forces issues, such as "The Science of Second Artillery Campaigns" by Yu Jixun.
The report claims that the PLA's seven military regions group large provinces and urban areas together and do not reflect today's power projection requirements. This makes it hard to "meet the needs of commanding multidimensional operations under high technology conditions."
The report indicates the PLA has limited amounts of new equipment to train on, and difficulties in integrating new and old equipment. In 2014, the PLA's main battle tank fleet consists "overwhelmingly of first- and second-generation tanks."
The Navy's 4,000-ton Type 054A frigate is considered a "mini-Aegis" vessel, but the ships are small and cannot carry enough long-range missiles for an actual area defense capability or handle a saturation attack from anti-ship missiles, particularly supersonic and hypersonic variants. The Chinese Navy also lacks anti-submarine warfare capabilities, most likely because the military has focused on anti-access rather than expeditionary deployments.
The report outlines 16 "critical assumptions" based on assessments made by the authors. It says
"The PLA's transition to integrated joint operations will be incremental over the medium to long term. Tough decisions will be deferred or watered down if they affect the entrenched power of the CCP." Due to the Army's influence, "continental thinking will continue to dominate in operational art and leadership thinking." Chinese leaders will additionally continue to believe that nuclear weapons underpin China's status and function as a central component of its broader suite of strategic deterrence options. The authors further assume that Chinese strategists will continue to see nuclear weapons as a means to deter nuclear coercion and say that "If we are incorrect and China begins to see nuclear weapons as more useful in tactical roles, it could result in the development of tactical nuclear capabilities that most Chinese strategists thus far have seen as unnecessary and potentially destabilizing."
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