Bless my wargaming heart. Today the U.S. Department of War released the 2025 China Military Power Report (CMPR), officially the Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2025. For those that might not be familiar with the CMPR, this is a congressionally-mandated unclassified annual report to Congress. It is recognized among open-source analysts and China military watchers as one of the best repositories of analysis on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Given that the Department of War publishes the report it is also considered an “official” U.S. government public statement on China’s military.
At 100 pages the 2025 CMPR discusses a wide range of topics and this year those topics include…wargaming. In “Chapter 2: PLA Strategy and Capabilities in 2024” under the header, “Enhancing Wargaming and Simulation” one reads:
The PLA recognizes that it faces a challenge in designing its force, preparing doctrine, and coming up with plans in the face of future uncertainty stemming from new and emerging technologies and the inherent unpredictability of warfare. Despite this uncertainty, it believes it must develop accurate theories that thoroughly predict the nature of future warfare. In order to hone its concepts, plans, and doctrine, it emphasizes the use of joint combat experiments and wargames. The PLA approach to wargaming emphasizes quantitative analysis and simulation verification to enhance the “scientific nature” of its combat plans and doctrines. The PLA is almost certainly working to further augment its wargaming capabilities with artificial intelligence.
The PLA is seeking to leverage modern science and technological developments to advance its simulation technologies to create a realistic combat evaluation system that can evaluate its force against its doctrinal standards, embodied in the Joint Operations Outline, the Joint Command Outline, the Military Training Regulations, and other guidance. This constitutes for the PLA the integration of theory and technology—something Xi Jinping has directed it to do. For example, in an operational planning process, the PLA envisions wargames as a staff-led function that dynamically displays, in a data-rich environment, the results of different courses of action, enabling commanders to understand the effects of their planned operations and adjust as necessary.
The PLA is also developing professional “blue forces” to model the U.S. military and test PLA forces and concepts in wargames. To optimally train its units, the PLA discusses turning its blue forces into “whetstones,” and PLA blue forces seek to emulate the current equipment, organization, rules and regulations, tactics, and training of the U.S. military. This is part of a sustained push to strengthen the study of enemy situations to develop tactics and training methods that can better prepare the PLA to combat the United States.
CMPR 2025, pp. 19-20
Personally, I wrote about “professional” or “serious” wargaming in China as far back as 2021 (see “Made in China Wargaming?” 20 Oct 2021 at The Armchair Dragoons) and have followed open source reports and studies since. As such, the above passages are not a surprise…to me. What is not captured in the CMPR is how commercial wargaming in China is—or is not—used by wargame practitioners. On a personal level—again—my exploration of the Joint All Domain Operation series from War Drum Games in China offers some insight into the commercial hobby views of modern warfare.
2020-what?
A word of warning: the 2025 CMPR was “supposed” to publish in early 2025 but it was held up for unspecified reasons. As such, the report covers events and reporting through 2024 and into some unspecified time in 2025. Even with the extended delay the publication looks rushed; the cover still says “Department of Defense” but the inner logo is “Department of War.” There is no Table of Contents. There is no information cut-off date. Those issues do not render the 2025 CMPR useless just…a bit less professional than the report deserves. Nonetheless, I intend to dig into the 2025 CMPR and see what other wargaming connections I find. The release of the report is a bit fortuitous as I am doing background reading and learning GMT Games Next War: Taiwan Second Edition (2025) in preparation for a “Future-History to Wargame” extended article.
Previously on the Blog
- “Made in China Wargaming?” 20 Oct 2021 at The Armchair Dragoons
- “Wargame SITREP 230202 N5 Plans: A PRC-Canada wargame connection you don’t want to see,” 02 Feb 2023.
- “Wargame SITREP 231222 N5 Plans ~ PRC space war game for wargame practitioners,” 22 Dec 2023.
- Joint All Domain Operation (War Drum Games, 2024)-related articles
- “Informationized Wargaming with Joint All Domain Operation,” 13 Dec 2024 at The Armchair Dragoons.
- “Informationized Land Warfare the JADO Way (Joint All Domain Operation 01 Land East China Sea Block 01B),” 02 Jan 2025 at The Armchair Dragoons.
- “Wargame SITREP 25-01 ~ Coming to terms with JADO (Joint All Domain Operation, designer Gavin Hu, War Drum Games, 2024),” 04 Jan 2025
- “Counter Deep Diving with Joint All Domain Operation,” 27 Jan 2025 at The Armchair Dragoons.
Feature image courtesy news-nest.com
The opinions and views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone and are presented in a personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Navy or any other U.S. government Department, Service, Agency, Office, or employer.
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