China’s military transformation over the past decade is one of the most consequential shifts in the global security landscape. The People’s Liberation Army has undergone sweeping structural reforms, reorganising from an army-centric force into a leaner joint warfighting-focused system built around theatre commands, integrated and precision operations, and an increasingly sophisticated military-industrial complex. At the same time, Beijing is fielding advanced weapons systems at a pace that has surprised even its closest observers — from hypersonic missiles and stealth fighters to aircraft carriers and AI-enabled autonomous platforms. China’s defence budget has grown at over 7 per cent annually since 2022, and its defence exports now arm countries from Pakistan to West Africa, quietly constructing a parallel security architecture in the Indo-Pacific.

For India, none of this is purely academic. China is simultaneously a continental neighbour with an unresolved border, a naval competitor expanding its presence in the Indian Ocean, a military-industrial partner to Pakistan, and an increasingly active arms supplier in India’s immediate neighbourhood. Understanding how the PLA is organised, how it trains and fights, what it produces and exports, and where it intends to apply force is no longer a niche specialism — it is an imperative.

‘China’s Defence in The New Era’ is an all-virtual, four-week course designed to give policymakers, military professionals, lawyers, think tankers, defence journalists, academics, and students a structured and accessible understanding of China’s military modernisation and what it means for India and the region. The course covers themes around the PLA’s post-2015 organisational overhaul, its purges and politics, China’s military-industrial complex and defence export ecosystem, evolving doctrine from informatisation to intelligentisation, the Taiwan contingency, and the India-China border. Participants will engage with Chinese-language primary sources, official defence white papers, and analytical frameworks that go beyond headlines to understand the logic and drivers enabling (or hindering) the PLA’s transformation.