Meet the Centenary Goal of the Armed Forces

Meet the Centenary Goal of the Armed Forces*

July 30, 2021

The CPC Central Committee and the Central Military Commission have set the centenary goal of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be achieved by 2027. This is an important task that bears on China’s national security and overall development. This centenary goal is the most crucial of the three steps to modernize China’s national defense and the military in the new era. To realize this goal as scheduled we must maintain firm resolve and a strong sense of urgency, and do solid work.

Through a century of struggle, the Party has reached a key conclusion – that the Party must command the gun and build up the people’s armed forces. This is a conclusion drawn from the war of blood and fire during the revolutionary years. Throughout the years of revolution, construction and reform, the people’s armed forces, under the Party’s leadership, have always borne in mind their original aspiration, founding mission, nature and purpose. They have forced a path through brambles and thorns, won one victory after another, and achieved extraordinary feats for the Party and the people. As long as the people’s armed forces progress under the absolute leadership of the Party, they will continue to grow in strength and provide firm support for the undertakings of our Party and our people.

A strong country must have strong armed forces, and only strong armed forces can keep the country safe. Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, the Central Committee and the Central Military Commission have made strategic plans to accelerate modernization of national defense and the military, leading the armed forces to reach a new stage of development. On the path towards the Second Centenary Goal of building China into a modern socialist country in all respects, we must give greater weight to boosting national defense and building a strong military.

The development plan for the armed forces during the 14th Five-year Plan period (2021-2025) has set the tasks for achieving the centenary goal of the armed forces. To build greater strategic capabilities, we must maintain the authority of the plan, coordinate all our efforts, focus on priority tasks, and press ahead with our work more efficiently and effectively. We will strengthen our military in line with the requirements of the battlefield. We will coordinate our overall development of the military with efforts to prepare our forces for the possibility of military action and to ensure combat readiness.

The centenary goal of the armed forces calls for profound military reform.

We should emphasize innovation, update our development philosophy, create new development models, and take a stronger initiative to ensure high-quality development.

We should strive for greater strength and self-reliance in science and technology, make breakthroughs in core technologies, and accelerate the development of strategic technologies, frontier technologies, and disruptive technologies, so that technological innovation provides crucial support for the development of our military.

We should drive deeper reform of national defense and the armed forces, in order to adapt to global military development trends and respond to the requirement of greater strategic capabilities of our military.

We should launch military management reform centered on strategic management, so that our military system can function more efficiently and our defense resources are utilized more effectively.

We should strengthen strategic planning with new ideas and measures, to enable all-round improvements in the quality, structure, deployment, development and management of our military personnel.

Achieving the centenary goal of the armed forces is the shared responsibility of all members of the military, the Party, and the country. Central Party and government departments, along with local Party committees and governments, must raise their awareness of national defense, meet the requirements of military reform, and fulfill their duties in national defense. We must take into full account military needs in our social and economic development, reinforce the defense functions of major infrastructure projects, and support the construction of important combat training projects. We will help with providing employment for spouses of our military personnel in the vicinity of their deployments, ensuring their children have access to education, resettling demobilized veterans, and guaranteeing other benefits and services for eligible recipients.

* Main points of the speech at the 32nd group study session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee.

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