As recently as the late 1990s, China's military, known as the People's Liberation Army (PLA), was being described as a “junkyard army” or “the world's largest military museum.” Aside from being equipped primarily with weapon systems based on 1950s Soviet designs, the PLA's combat doctrine was also outmoded, its training was lackadaisical, and its personnel were poorly educated and led. Indeed, the primary focus of the PLA was not on conducting military operations but on making money from a wide range of commercial operations.

Changes since that time have been rapid. Today China's defense industries are now producing weapon systems comparable to the M1 Abrams tanks, Aegis destroyers, and F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft that are the mainstays of the U.S. military. In 2007, China tested a ground-launched missile that intercepted one of China's own weather satellites, making it only the third nation (after the United States and Soviet Union) to demonstrate the capability to destroy a satellite in orbit. In 2011, while U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates was in Beijing for meetings with China's leadership, China conducted a test flight of an advanced stealth fighter that looks remarkably like those recently developed by the United States.

In addition to modernizing its weaponry since the late 1990s, moreover, the PLA has revised its combat doctrine, upgraded its training, personnel, and leadership, and divested itself of its business interests. All of this progress has been accompanied by a massive increase in defense spending. In 1998, China's official defense budget was $11.3 billion. Beijing's announced defense budget for 2014 was $132 billion. If these trends continue, how powerful will the PLA be in the future? Will its military capabilities soon rival or surpass those of the United States? Or is the U.S. military edge over China so great that it will take decades for the PLA to catch up?

The answers to these questions are of more than just abstract interest. Although China's economy is increasingly intertwined with that of the rest of the world, China has territorial disputes with many countries in Asia and is becoming increasingly assertive regarding its claims. Most significantly, China claims that Taiwan, which has been politically independent from the mainland since 1949, is part of Chinese territory, and Beijing asserts that it has a right to use force to incorporate the island under its governance.