A ‘Cold Start’ Military Posture with Chinese Characteristics

CSIS ChinaPower:

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is edging toward a new “cold start-style” military operational posture, with the goal of being able to conduct rapid, high-intensity offensive operations before an adversary can mobilize or intervene. This pivot is part of the PLA’s larger mobilization reforms, which China initiated in 2017-18. However, it was not until 2022, spurred by the visit to Taiwan by former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, that the PLA began implementing these reforms in real-time military exercises and drills. Since then, the PLA has begun conducting advanced exercises around Taiwan, focusing on a cold start military operational posture and capabilities, and it is replicating these on a relatively limited scale within the Tibet and Xinjiang Military Districts. Unlike other experiments, which are generally first implemented in the Eastern Theater Command (ETC)—a laboratory of implementation of the Chinese military reforms, the PLA has better managed to achieve its cold start posture in Tibet, Xinjiang, and possibly the entire Western Theater Command (WTC), which is responsible for an India contingency.

Through careful reading of PLA military textbooks, tracing evidence in Chinese and PLA leadership speeches, mapping institutional changes, and examining recent major PLA military exercises and drills, this article shows how China’s armed forces are steadily moving towards a long-sought cold start-style operational posture.

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