China’s Quest for Military Supremacy is a difficult book to review, not because of its drawbacks, but because it is hard to identify any weaknesses or omissions. The book is highly recommended for newcomers as well as experienced students of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) development. Wuthnow and Saunders describe China’s military modernization efforts from the Mao to the Xi era, with an emphasis on reforms during Xi Jinping’s rule. Their book sets out to assess China’s military power, using political, strategic, technical and operational lenses to understand how the military instrument supports the strategic goals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in a world defined more by strategic competition in light of the PLA’s historical development trajectory.

The main contention of the book is that the PLA is stronger and more confident today than at any point in its history, although it has intrinsic flaws that neither technology nor money will resolve, and that create vulnerabilities should the PLA ever be ordered into combat. The book investigates this contention through analyses of the relationship between the CCP and the PLA (chapter one), the strategic outlook and threat perceptions of China’s leaders (chapter two), changes in the PLA’s strategy, organization and resources from Mao to Xi (chapter three), the history and recent modernization of the PLA across the conventional, cyber and space domains and its ground-based nuclear and conventional missile forces (chapters four and five), the PLA’s military diplomacy and coercive activities (chapter six), China’s preparations for war with Taiwan (chapter seven), and the PLA’s role as a global security actor (chapter eight).

The organization of the book’s arguments allows for a comprehensive, thorough and well-written analysis of almost any topic that modern PLA analysts are thinking about. This includes how China’s prioritization of cyber and counter-space capabilities shapes the missions and operations the PLA can undertake under strategic competition and the vulnerabilities these choices have created; how lessons from Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine influence PLA’s preparation for future conflicts; the consequences of the PLA’s Janus-faced adoption of military diplomacy and coercive tactics in key overseas relationships in regions such as East Asia and South Asia; and the major challenges the PLA faces in developing the ability to conduct medium- or large-scale combat operations abroad.

The main challenges are not lack of modern capabilities. Rather, it is the interplay between the human, political and organizational component combined with a relatively inward-looking focus in the PLA and Chinese leaders’ defence strategic outlook. The historical purpose of the state apparatus, including the Chinese military, of protecting the CCP regime rather than the country and its people, explains this inward-looking focus towards building a defence prepared to fight in China’s borderlands and its Asian periphery. Arguably, it is this mindset that gives rise to continuous challenges such as the lack of a global joint command structure, an insufficiently mature global logistics system, and the lack of overseas operational experience within the PLA. More money or reorganization efforts will not solve these challenges, as the authors are well aware.

It is always possible to argue that some topics should have received more coverage. Although Taiwan is a key issue in the history of the PLA in view of its role in defending the CCP as the sole protector of China and the Chinese, devoting a chapter to this issue seems too much. A broader analysis of the PLA’s role in defending the blurred boundaries of the Chinese motherland in areas such as the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Yellow Sea as well as Taiwan would be more in line with the broad agenda of writing a comprehensive analysis of China’s military development. The implications of China’s growing ability to threaten US forces and challenge foreign naval presence by means of a mix of air, naval and missile forces operating from China or its near abroad in areas such as the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea would have made the book more relevant for readers thinking about future conflicts and warfare involving the PLA. It would also have made the chapter on Taiwan more interesting if the authors had considered the courses of action that the PLA could choose between in the event of an escalation of a Taiwan contingency. More attention to the China–Russia relationship would also have been desirable, as would a more detailed analysis of the role of uncrewed systems in future force design as envisaged by the PLA. When discussing the military’s human capital, it is also debatable whether deference to high-level authority is a problem merely for the combat readiness of Taiwanese forces. Undoubtedly, it is also a fundamental problem for the combat capacity of PLA forces.

These minor caveats should not detract from the general impression that Wuthnow and Saunders have written the seminal work of the Xi era on how the PLA operates as an institution, what motivates its leaders, and how to evaluate its capabilities and operations in Asia and beyond.