President Xi Jinping’s appearance at the People’s Liberation Army and People’s Armed Police delegation meeting on March 7 marked his 14th visit to this group since 2013, underscoring a long-running, hands-on campaign to shape the military’s trajectory. The remarks were less a report of new policy than a compendium of steady priorities: insistence on the Party’s absolute leadership of the armed forces, acceleration of technology-led modernisation, legal and institutional reforms to manage the force, and intensified efforts to convert scientific advances into combat power.
Over multiple years Xi has repeatedly folded military modernisation into broader national projects—the Five-Year planning cycle, defence “three-step” roadmaps, and the push for “civil–military integration.” At this meeting he revisited those themes, stressing the need to safeguard political unity within the ranks, to deepen reforms of personnel and institutions, and to raise the legal and governance standards that undergird the armed forces’ transformation.
A pronounced emphasis on science and innovation recurs through his remarks: higher spending and faster conversion of advanced technologies into fielded capabilities, talent recruitment, and doctrinal adaptation are presented as essential to making the PLA more technologically dense and performance-driven. That line ties to Beijing’s broader industrial and innovation strategy and signals a continued prioritisation of dual-use research and arms development that fuses civilian technological progress with military ends.
Xi also framed legal and procedural reform—“rule by law” in the military context—as a means to institutionalise the Party’s control while professionalising behaviour, decision-making and accountability across the services. The push to codify command, personnel and procurement processes is pitched as a way to stabilise the modernisation effort and reduce bureaucratic frictions that have slowed past reforms.
The public reiteration of these themes at a high-profile delegation meeting serves multiple domestic and international functions. Domestically, it reassures the officer corps that political oversight will remain paramount even as the PLA acquires new capabilities; internationally, it signals continuity of purpose in Beijing’s defence posture—an increasingly modernised, Party-led force that will rely heavily on technological edge.
For foreign governments and defence planners, the meeting reinforces what has been visible for more than a decade: China is methodically aligning organisational reform, legal frameworks and science and technology policy to accelerate military capability. That alignment raises forecasting stakes for regional security, complicates arms-control conversation, and underlines why technology controls and defence cooperation will remain central to strategic competition with China.