China Military Power Report

Congressionally mandated report

The China Military Power Report (abbr. CMPR), officially the Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China, is an annual report produced by the United States Department of Defense for the United States Congress that provides estimates, forecasts, and analysis of the People's Republic of China (PRC) military and security developments for the previous year. An unclassified form of the congressionally mandated report is published publicly. The unclassified CMPR represents the most detailed, publicly available source of information on the Chinese military. The CMPR, submitted by the Secretary of Defense on behalf of the Department of Defense, is separate from and not be confused with similarly named publication by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) 2019 China Military Power, which, along with its sister threat reports on the militaries of North Korea, Iran, and Russia, was intended to continue the legacy of DIA's annual Soviet Military Power publication which ended after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Prior to 2020, CMPRs have led with an executive summary encapsulating the key findings of the entire report in just a few pages. Prior to 2019, executive summaries were followed by an 'Annual Update' chapter which would provide a brief synopsis of significant developments in Chinese military and security advances during the previous year. In 2019, the annual update chapter was discontinued, and in 2020 a preface was added before the executive summary in an effort to frame the context of the report amid the evolution of the Chinese military and national security strategy. Also in 2020, the executive summary was restructured to mirror each section and subsection of the report's main body and present key takeaways and conclusions from each.

The first chapter of each CMPR's body is "Understanding the PRC's Strategy" ("China's Strategy" prior to 2023). The chapter details PRC national strategy, foreign policy, economic policy, belt and road initiative, military civil fusion (MCF) development strategy, and defense policy and military strategy. The chapter "PLA Forces, Capabilities, and Power Projection", known as "Missions and Tasks of China's Armed Forces in a New Era" in 2021 and "Force Modernization Goals and Trends" in each year prior, provide extensive estimates of PLA forces' size, composition, disposition, technologies including for paramilitary and militia forces, special operations forces, joint training, space and counterspace training, nuclear forces, CBRN forces. The chapter "Operational Structure and Activities on China's Periphery", titled specifically as the "Force Modernization for a Taiwan Contingency" prior to 2019, details the regionally aligned commands of the PLA and their training and operations in support of force projection into neighboring nations, the South China Sea, and Taiwan — towards which CMPRs present a detailed assessment of Chinese readiness for an anticipated invasion and capabilities of the Taiwanese military to resist. The chapter "The PLA's Growing Global Presence", not present in CMPRs prior to 2020, details growing relationships with other nations and integration of the PLA with China's foreign policy goals, with sections on the PRC's global military activities, overseas military presence, foreign military cooperation, overseas basing and access, influence operations, influence actors, cognitive domain operations, energy strategy, and specifically PLA's arctic presence. The chapter "Resources and Technology for Force Modernization" (the word "Technology" was added in 2020) discusses military expenditure trends, personnel costs, defense industry, missile and space industry, naval and shipbuilding industry, armaments industry, aviation industry, foreign arms acquisition, industrial defense espionage, arms exports, and the PRC's desires to dominate emergy technology industries including artificial intelligence. The final chapter of each CMPR's main body is a detailed accounting and analysis of US PRC defense contacts and exchanges in the previous year, both for their contribution to understanding PRC strategy and to fulfill the Defense Department's obligation to provide congress with an annual report on such exchanges, according to Section 1201 of the FY 2000 NDAA. This section provides a specific listing of high level contacts and exchanges, recurring exchanges, confidence building measures and academic exchanges, and military to military contacts, including whether the contact or exchange actually occurred, was refused, cancelled, or ignored.

Each CMPR closes with a varying number of appendixes called for by earlier sections. In recent years' reports, these have included "PRC and Taiwan Forces Data", "Selected Bilateral and Multilateral Exercises in 2022", "China's Top Crude Oil Suppliers in 2020". The last of these appendixes is always a listing of acronyms and abbreviations.