China's growing military capabilities serve its ambition to become the greatest power in Asia. Correspondingly, the PLA continues to modernize its forces. Established American economic and military relationships in Asia dictate national strategies of either engagement or containment of Chinese influence. A potential for Sino - American conflict exists. The monograph defines China's current security environment from engagement and containment perspectives. Recent assessments of the PLA's growing force projection capabilities are reviewed to provide the background for an examination of the PLA's combined arms capabilities. The monograph illustrates the PLA's attempts to modernize its force through improvements in combined arms capabilities. Using the 1979 Sino - Vietnamese Conflict as a measurement of combat effectiveness, the PLA initiated doctrinal, organizational, educational and training reforms with varying degrees of success. The monograph discusses each of these four areas and determines that major impediments to the PLA's modernization are competing doctrinal requirements, austere defense budgets and continued political reliance on the primacy of a "people's war." Unwilling and incapable of rapidly modernizing the entire force, the PLA believes that it can continue to leverage non-equipment aspects of modernization to overcome technological shortfalls and military incompetence. The monograph concludes by acknowledging improvements in PLA combined arms capabilities, but indicates that the Chinese remain well behind the U.S. in achieving military superpower status. The PLA is a growing military power. It is rapidly developing the capability to serve China's regional and global ambitions. The U.S. Army will incur greater requirements to develop military to military ties with the PLA as part of a national engagement program.

ADA 340324 Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)