China's Evolving Military Doctrine: Informatization to Intelligentization

From 'People's War' to High-Tech Local Wars

For much of its history, the PLA's doctrine was rooted in Mao Zedong's concept of "People's War." This strategy, effective during the Chinese Civil War, was designed for a technologically inferior force. It emphasized luring an invader deep into China's vast territory and overwhelming them through mass mobilization, protracted warfare, and guerrilla tactics. The focus was on surviving, trading space for time, and wearing down the enemy's will.

This paradigm was shattered in 1991. While the world watched the U.S.-led coalition eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait during the First Gulf War, PLA planners saw something more profound: a new type of warfare. The US military showcased devastating precision, coordination, and speed, enabled by satellites, stealth technology, and networked computer systems. To the PLA, it was clear that massed armies were no match for a military that could see everything, communicate instantly, and strike with pinpoint accuracy from afar.

This shock prompted a fundamental rethink. To understand this pivot, we'll start with a video that provides an excellent historical overview of the evolution of China's military strategy.

As the video explains, the PLA's new guiding principle became preparing to fight and win "local wars under modern, high-tech conditions." The focus shifted from defending the entire mainland to projecting power in China's immediate periphery, with a potential conflict over Taiwan becoming the main planning driver. The key to winning such wars, the PLA realized, was mastering the flow of information.

The Doctrine of "Informatization" (信息化)

The lessons from the Gulf War and subsequent U.S. military operations in the Balkans led the PLA to embrace the concept of "Informatized Warfare" (信息化战争, xìnxīhuà zhànzhēng).

The core idea of informatization is to achieve information superiority. This means building a networked military where all assets—sensors (satellites, radar, drones), decision-makers (command centers), and shooters (missiles, aircraft, ships)—are linked together. The goal is to create a seamless "system of systems" that can collect, process, and share information faster and more effectively than an adversary, allowing you to make better decisions more quickly.

This is often associated with the American concept of "Network-Centric Warfare." The video you just watched continues to explain how China formally adopted this idea.

An informatized military can conduct highly coordinated joint operations, where the air force, navy, army, and cyber forces act in concert rather than as separate entities.

This diagram gives a sense of what this looks like in practice. It's not just about individual platforms, but about how they connect and share data to create a synergistic effect.

The Next Frontier: "Intelligentization" (智能化)

By the late 2010s, PLA strategists concluded that simply networking their forces was no longer enough. The sheer volume of data produced by an informatized military was becoming overwhelming for human operators to process. The next revolution, they argued, would be driven by artificial intelligence. This led to the adoption of "Intelligentized Warfare" (智能化战争, zhìnénghuà zhànzhēng) as the new frontier.

Let's read a short article that explains how this concept was formally integrated into China's national and military strategy.

As the article makes clear, intelligentization is not replacing informatization; it is building on top of it.

• Mechanization provides the physical platforms (tanks, ships, planes).
• Informatization connects them into a network.
• Intelligentization uses AI to make that network "smart."

But what does this mean in practical terms? It means using AI, big data analytics, and autonomous systems to radically accelerate the entire process of warfare—from finding a target to destroying it. For a clear, non-technical explanation of how AI is changing the character of war, the following video is exceptionally useful. While not specific to China, it perfectly illustrates the concepts the PLA is pursuing.

This is the essence of intelligentized warfare: using AI to achieve decision-making superiority. The side that can observe, orient, decide, and act (the "OODA loop" in Western military parlance) faster and more effectively will win. China believes that by mastering AI, it can "leapfrog" the United States and gain a decisive military edge.

Conclusion

China's military doctrine has undergone a profound transformation over the past three decades, driven by a clear-eyed assessment of modern warfare and rapid technological change.

Key Takeaways:

• The 1991 Gulf War was a catalyst, pushing the PLA to abandon its Mao-era "People's War" doctrine and focus on winning "local wars under high-tech conditions."
• Informatization was the first phase of this transformation. It focused on networking sensors, command systems, and weapons to achieve information superiority and enable complex joint operations.
• Intelligentization is the current and future direction. It seeks to leverage artificial intelligence, big data, and autonomous systems to automate analysis and accelerate decision-making to a speed beyond human capacity.
• The PLA's official goal is the integrated development of mechanization, informatization, and intelligentization, believing this is the path to creating a "world-class military" capable of defeating any adversary.

Preview of the Next Lesson:

Having explored the high-tech conventional doctrine of the PLA, we will next examine the ultimate backstop to its strategy. In our next lesson, we will address the learning outcome: Analyze China's nuclear doctrine and strategic deterrence posture. We will discuss its longstanding "No First Use" policy and how its nuclear force modernization might be challenging traditional interpretations of its strategy.