The Chinese Communist Party announces its intentions in code but not in secret. CCP policy decisions are coded in in tifa 提法, usually translated as "slogan" or "formulation," and shared in open channels. My latest @RANDCorporation report discusses how to read these tifa:

RT @jwuthnow: Excited to appear in a 3-part @Telegraph series on the PLA on its Battle Lines program hosted by @venetiarainey -- "China's m….

RT @JonathonPSine: 🚨 New essay: on Torigian’s biography of Xi Zhongxun. This isn’t a book about Xi Jinping. It’s a study of the Chinese Co….

RT @Newsweek: The learnings support China's development of strategies and policies for strategic competition with the United States, the re….

RT @mtdtl: An impressive analysis of the lessons drawn by the PLA from Russia’s operations in Ukraine. The insights on hybrid warfare are p….

RT @jcmittelstaedt: New RAND report on Chinese lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war . Free download: .

RT @hofunghung: Warning from China's Ministry of State Security: a few categories of ppl are likely to be spies; one category is "scholars….

RT @JosephTorigian: Thrilled to see this new @WSJ @ByChunHan feature on my book about Xi Jinping’s father Xi Zhongxun @HooverInst @stanford….

While current PLA research continues to examine hybrid warfare and the utility of non-military tools, this research focuses on how such tools can aid battlefield victories rather than avoid conflict. PLA researchers assess the lethality of nonmilitary tools will only increase.

In other words, seeing Russian hybrid warfare fail on the battlefield likely undermines PLA faith that Gerasimov's promise of minimally militarized victory is possible, and leading PLA researchers are growing increasingly resigned to fighting a conflict with the United States.

. Even if they experience a partial success, this is a low probability event. You must not place your hope of victory on this, lest you fall into passivity.” Rather, they warn, the PLA “must be mentally prepared for a tough battle with huge casualties.”.

In 2023, professors from the PLA NDU Joint Operations Academy, which trains the PLA’s joint commanders, warned, “almost all military leaders hope to achieve ‘winning without fighting’ through deterrence rather than going to war, but most of them will fail. .

This failure motivated a significant shift in PLA thinking on the CCP's competition with the United States. Avoiding conflict was still ideal, but it seemed increasingly out of reach given the failure of hybrid warfare.

Instead, Ukraine fought back, imposing devastating losses on Russia's military in the opening months of the war.

But in 2022, hybrid warfare failed in Ukraine. PLA researchers believed Russia anticipated non-military tools such as cyberattacks would cow Ukraine into a rapid surrender, enabling Russia's military to invade without the need to create local overmatch.

At the time, the PLA unambiguously acknowledged that hybrid warfare was its plan to win without fighting the United States. PLA researchers widely frame China's future hybrid wars as those against the "strong enemy," their euphemism for the United States.

In 2021, authoritative PLA media embraced hybrid warfare and explained that it "opened up a path for ‘war’ between major powers within the balance of nuclear deterrence and economic independence," promising the rewards of victory without the catastrophic costs of war.

PLA researchers believed Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov pioneered a new way of war,  employing society's non-military tools as instruments of deterrence or compellance, reducing the need for military force to "minimum armed strikes."  This was hybrid warfare.

This was a critical dilemma. How would the CCP achieve its political objectives and win the confrontation with the United States without paying the catastrophic costs of hegemonic war?. At the time, they thought Russia had the answer: hybrid warfare.

For decades, CCP leaders warned of "inevitable" confrontation between what they saw as a rising China and a U.S. in terminal decline. They believed the U.S. grew increasingly reliant and more willing to use military force, including by instigating wars, to maintain its status.

BLUF: Leading People's Liberation Army researchers believe they have growing opportunities to take advantage of the Russia-Ukraine war to prepare for a future conflict with the United States but that their opportunities to avoid such a conflict altogether are diminishing.