China Maritime Studies Institute – The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) operates a pervasive system of discipline inspection commissions (DICs) spanning the Party and military hierarchy to enforce political discipline and loyalty…The activities of the PLAN DIC and its subordinate DICs may have resulted in a higher degree of professionalism among PLAN personnel, although the magnitude of the change is not clear based on publicly available information. For the PLAN, as well as the rest of the PLA, political loyalty in contemporary China means personal control by and loyalty to Xi Jinping himself.

USNI News – Chinese forces rehearsed enforcing Beijing’s claim to Scarborough Shoal with drones and boarding drills on Sunday amid state media claims that China has extended its control of several contested maritime features beyond 24 nautical miles.

The War Zone – Recent satellite imagery shows a host of highly specialized features on the ship that’s under construction, as well as a large cradle sitting beside it.

USNI News – Chinese warships and cutters blocked a Philippine resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal on Thursday in the most significant development at the disputed South China Sea feature. 

CIMSEC – Ships can deter a competitor, compel a rival, and escort a convoy. What they cannot do is build the institutions, relationships, information systems, and rules that keep maritime order running when the guns are silent. China has worked this out. Washington and most of its partners treat governance as an appendage to naval strategy, rather than a domain of competition in its own right.

The War Zone – A Chinese submarine now taking shape at Bohai Shipyard has a number of significant features and offers new insights into China’s undersea ambitions.

War on the Rocks – All states should come to terms with the fact that China’s survey operations east of Taiwan are either a prelude to war or to the slow strangulation of Taiwan’s separate status. China’s fleet of civilian vessels is, in essence, military assets at Beijing’s beck and call, and China increasingly uses its civilian fleet for military purposes, such as containerized missiles and amphibious lift. All states with an interest in peace and stability in East Asia have an interest in deterring China from using its research vessels to engage in military activities such as underwater sabotage, installing or employing fixed undersea sensors, or perhaps prepositioning sea mines. In fact, this applies globally. Beyond East Asia, China’s fleet of research vessels enables Beijing to conduct activities supporting military operations and political objectives anywhere in the world. Unless states recognize and respond to the political, legal, and military impact of their operations, Taiwan’s challenge today may be another country’s tomorrow.

Covert Shores – Hiding behind signs warning onlookers not to take photographs, a previously unreported stealth boat has been seen in at least two Chinese ports. The vessel has been in the water for some time but had evaded the attention of onlookers, until now.

Covert Shores – China is building a new form of drone mothership, one large enough and specially shaped and equipped, to carry drone submarines. The vessel is under construction at the Hudong-Zhonghua shipyard in Shanghai.

CIMSEC – The evolution of the PLAN’s maritime medical platforms from the 1970s to the present day is a study in implementing a methodical and deliberate modernization strategy. From the complete absence of dedicated maritime medical capabilities in the Battle of the Paracels, the PLAN’s trajectory has taken it to makeshift adaptations in the 1990s and early 2000s, to a robust, layered network of twelve dedicated vessels today. This fleet looks set to be increasingly augmented by a growing PRC-built civilian capability, providing a blueprint for scaling up platforms as required . This diverse ecosystem provides the PLAN with a dependable maritime medical capacity for routine operations in the South China Sea; a dedicated capability to rapidly service large numbers of casualties in the event of a regional contingency close to the mainland (such as a Taiwan conflict scenario), as well as support PLAN ambitions to project maritime power around the world in the coming years.

US Naval War College Review – As the People’s Republic of China continues to amass military forces across the strait from Taiwan, Chinese military doctrine holds the keys to preparing for potential conflict. Elements of surprise and deception, akin to those used by Russia during the invasion of Ukraine, may drive strategy and preparation for a potential invasion of Taiwan.

The War Zone – Chinese state-run shipping company COSCO has been using concealed systems on its vessels to gather signals intelligence around North American, European, and Asian coastlines for decades, it has been alleged.

China Maritime Studies Institute – Intelligent Tools for Designing Operational Concepts: Intelligent Agents Innovating Mechanisms for Victory

RUSI – If tomorrow’s wars are fought mainly by machines, victory belongs to the power that can fuse AI with robotics and build the result by the million. Today, that is China.

China Maritime Studies Institute – In August 2023, the United States Pacific Command (PACOM) first used the term “Hellscape” to describe a future Taiwan Strait battlefield. That same month the Pentagon unveiled the Replicator Initiative, which reportedly aims to rapidly field thousands of expendable uncrewed systems. Official People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sources have reacted to the U.S. military’s public remarks about Hellscape in a strident fashion. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) defense ministry spokesman said Americans advocating for the Hellscape concept “should prepare to burn in hell” and called such individuals “extremely psychotic.” Yet contrary to the PLA’s dismissive political rhetoric and claims that the U.S. is a “paper tiger,” many military experts in China take Hellscape and Replicator seriously and respect the core premise of employing large numbers of cheap drones, seeing it as one of the keys to the future of war.

War on the Rocks – China has spent years modifying civilian ferries to launch amphibious armored vehicles, developing specialized equipment to move forces ashore without conventional port facilities, hardening dozens of air bases, and rapidly expanding the missile forces that could be used to deter or defeat a U.S. intervention. Yet at the same time, a recurring line of analysis has argued that concerns about China’s military capabilities are overstated — and that an invasion of Taiwan remains beyond the reach of the People’s Liberation Army.

The War Zone – China’s fourth aircraft carrier, which could be nuclear-powered, is looking more and more like a real ship.

China Maritime Studies Institute – The United States has initiated substantive preparations for high-end warfare and continues to exert coercive pressure on China. Drawing on insights from over a dozen localized conflicts, this article analyzes the US military’s strike capabilities, operational patterns, and systemic ground vulnerabilities. Grounded in the concepts of resilience and survivability, systems-based confrontation, and tiered defense, it proposes targeted operational principles, countermeasures, and strategic recommendations for countering precision strikes by the powerful enemy.

Breaking Defense – From AI integration to the economics of air and missile defense, Chinese military commentators are paying especially close attention to the US-Israel war in Iran.

ABC – In the final days of May, a Chinese research vessel ventured 74 kilometres into Palau’s waters and reportedly spent 14 hours moving slowly through the island nation’s maritime zone. With a bow built to push through a metre of Arctic sea ice, the 89-metre icebreaker Ji Di might have looked out of place in the warm waters of the North Pacific.

Global Times – The Chinese Navy’s guided-missile frigate Honghe (Hull 523) and the Indonesian Navy frigate KRI I Gusti Ngurah Rai completed all scheduled exercises in waters east of China’s Taiwan island on Wednesday morning, marking the conclusion of a China-Indonesia maritime passage exercise,

Defence Blog – Social media images published Sunday show China’s unnamed experimental stealth corvette fitted with a new system in place of its previous missile turret. Analysts differ on whether the system is a sonic weapon or a naval version of a high-power microwave weapon designed to counter drone swarms.

(Thanks to Alain)

USNI News – The People’s Liberation Army Ground Force trained last week to use armed drones against unmanned surface vessels.

China Maritime Studies Institute – The United States has initiated substantive preparations for high-end warfare and continues to exert coercive pressure on China. Drawing on insights from over a dozen localized conflicts, this article analyzes the US military’s strike capabilities, operational patterns, and systemic ground vulnerabilities. Grounded in the concepts of resilience and survivability, systems-based confrontation, and tiered defense, it proposes targeted operational principles, countermeasures, and strategic recommendations for countering precision strikes by the powerful enemy.