Operational Environments

Chinese Tactics > PART ONE: People’s Liberation Army Forces > Chapter 1: People’s Liberation Army Fundamentals > Operational Environments

 

1-27. U.S. military analysis of an operational environment, including a composite environment created for training, professional education, and leader development purposes, focuses on eight interrelated operational variables: political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time—collectively referred to as PMESII-PT. The following is a list of PMESII-PT conditions and trends found in China. It is not comprehensive, but it suggests a number of possible factors that U.S. exercise planners might use when constructing scenarios:

• Political:
• The fractious relationship between China and Taiwan.
• Maritime disputes in the South and East China Seas.
• Complex sociopolitical interactions between China and North Korea.
• Land border disputes and frictions.
• Friction between the CPC and the growing quasi-capitalist ultra-wealthy class.
• Expansion of Chinese influence in emerging markets, particularly in Africa and Southwest Asia.
• Human rights violations, particularly against internal political opposition and minorities, and the harassment and mistreatment of journalists.
• Separatism in Western China.
• Major anticorruption efforts at every level of government.
• Military:
• Growing use of high-technology weapons systems such as fifth-generation and low-observable aircraft, ballistic and cruise missiles, precision munitions, and networked warfare.
• Ongoing top-to-bottom reform of the PLA, including widespread professionalization.
• Expansion of standoff precision munitions and other antiaccess capabilities.
• Establishment of hardened military facilities on islands, both natural and manmade, throughout the Western Pacific.
• Gradual expansion of PLA expeditionary capabilities, particularly throughout the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans.
• Economic:
• Continued liberalization of formerly hardline Marxist-Leninist and Maoist economic policy.
• Threats to critical shipping lanes and overland trade routes linking China with its export markets.
• Export and trade restrictions on raw materials, particularly on rare but critical metals.
• Major anticorruption efforts at every level of government.
• Complex economic relationship with North Korea.
• Social:
• Increased internal frictions with minority groups, particularly in and around distressed border regions.
• Continued adoption of Western cultural products, especially by younger generations.
• Social resistance to heavy-handed governmental approach to internal security.
• Increased frictions between quasi-capitalist Chinese oligarchs and more-traditional CPC supporters due to failure to quell corruption.
• Information:
• Extensive use of cyber activities—official, unofficial, and third party—to influence conditions domestically and abroad.
• Ongoing active People’s Republic of China (PRC) cyber activities attempting to extract sensitive or classified information from foreign networks, particularly those in defense industries.
• Sophisticated information operations campaigns to influence both global and regional politics.
• Infrastructure:
• Continued development of domestic infrastructure with a focus on the export economy.
• Heavy investment in overseas infrastructure, particularly in emerging markets for Chinese export goods.
• Physical Environment:
• Ongoing effects of global climate change reducing availability of arable land and threatening low-lying coastal areas.
• Increasing frequency and severity of tropical storms, which affect military and economic development in the Western Pacific.
• Shortsighted environmental policies creating public health crises due to air and water pollution and rapid depletion of shared international resources, such as fisheries.
• Time:
• The Chinese have historically taken a much longer view of time than the United States.
• The PLA has deliberately chosen to adopt a more Western view of time as part of its ongoing military reforms.