New weapons which pose new threats to Taiwan were rolled out by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People's Liberation Army (PLA) during China's Sept. 3 "parade of threats," an analyst noted.
"The CCP’s goal of replacing U.S. leadership on the global stage was advanced by the military parade, but also by China hosting in Tianjin an August 31-Sept. 1 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which since 2001 has specialized in conducting large multilateral military exercises and this year was gifted by China with a development bank," Richard Fisher wrote for the Taipei Times on Sept. 15.
The one-two punch of the SCO summit and the military parade "also demonstrated that CCP leader Xi Jinping can out-powerplay U.S. President Donald Trump — who had just bombed Chinese ally Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure on June 21, and respond to Trump’s attempts to hive Russia off of the 'Axis of Evil' now led by China," added Fisher, a contributing editor for Geostrategy-Direct.com.
Perhaps the most serious propaganda “bomb” dropped by the CCP/PLA came in a Sept. 3 CGTN state television post-parade interview with Professor Victor Gao, a current star in the CCP Propaganda Department’s revolving array of regime flacks.
Gao kicked off a new major CCP propaganda theme when he declared: “…I’m convinced, more and more convinced that the Chinese military is the strongest in the world, next to nobody.”
Really?
The challenge of countering this propaganda "bomb," is made easier by the Chinese Communist Party's vulnerabilities on public display at the Sept. 3 spectacle, argued Miles Yu a military history professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and a former contributing editor at Geostrategy-Direct.com.
In a Washington Times column, Yu who is also director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute noted the following about China's Sept. 3 "parade of threats":
Yet the display revealed as much about the PLA’s weaknesses as it did about its strengths. Behind the polished surface of new platforms and weaponry lie deep vulnerabilities that limit the PLA’s effectiveness. …
The Chinese Communist Party is among the most corrupt in the world, and the parade reflects the level of the CCP’s depth of corruption and procurement failures.
In the week leading up to the parade, China Government Procurement Weekly announced the termination of licenses for nearly 200 weapons assessment experts for fraud, along with licenses for 116 key defense suppliers, many of them state-owned, for substandard or fraudulent products. The fact that Beijing felt compelled to act days before the military extravaganza underscores how deeply corruption undermines procurement, particularly in the Rocket Force and the General Armament Department. Such systemic weaknesses call into question the reliability of the very weapons showcased on Sept. 3.
These systemic weaknesses were unmistakably reinforced by the market as it soundly rejected the CCP’s military propaganda. On the very day of the parade, the stocks of nearly all of China’s leading defense manufacturers plummeted.
The numbers suggest that investors — those most attuned to risk and many insiders — did not believe the propaganda value of the spectacle.
Nevertheless, the CCP’s “cognitive” manipulation orchestra, Fisher wrote, can be expected to hype this theme as it can:"1) help convince Chinese they can never escape the CCP dictatorship;
2) force most other countries to accommodate Beijing more and Washington less;
3) push America’s allies to doubt the strength of their alliance; and
4) further undermine the confidence of Taiwanese that Washington can save them, giving power to the sirens of accommodation with the CCP, meaning surrender."
Fsher added: "Another Sept. 3 revelation is the degree to which the PLA is advancing in the application of advanced information and Artificial Intelligence to enable unmanned and even autonomous weapons, and to enhance traditional weapons."Perhaps most unsettling was the revelation of the world’s first two supersonic-speed capable, potentially autonomous jet-fighter-size Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), to be controlled from PLA 5th and 4th generation manned fighters to force attrition of the manned combat aircraft of Taiwan, the U.S. and Japan."
About the same size as a Chengdu Aircraft Corporation J-10 fighter, these two “CCAs” could be competitive products of Chengdu and the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation, which are now testing prototypes of their 6th generation combat aircraft.While the U.S. is also devoting increasing effort to develop CCAs, the PLA’s may now be in service while the U.S. has not yet revealed any supersonic CCAs.
Another piece of “cognitive” propaganda revealed on Chinese social media on Sept. 3 was an image of humanoid and “wolf” robots watching the parade — an indicator, Fisher noted, "that the next PLA military parade could feature a phalanx of combat-capable humanoid robots."
The PLA is also preparing to counter Taiwan’s investments in drones, having revealed three types of laser weapons, two specifically to counter drones, and a large Norinco microwave weapon to fry the electronics of small drone weapons.
"Taiwan’s response is encouraging, starting with the announcement in late August of a 22.9 percent increase in defense spending for 2026, potentially increasing military spending to 3.39 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the first time since 2009," Fisher wrote.
"While short of some suggestions from U.S. officials that Taiwan increase its military spending to 5 percent or even 10 percent of GDP, it is progress and what Taiwan intends to acquire is encouraging."
Fisher continued: "This starts with increasing its Lockheed-Martin HIMARS missile launchers from 29 to 57, indicating a future capability to launch up to 114 300+km range ATACMS short-range ballistic missiles.
"There are also plans to acquire about 50,000 drones both small and large over the next five years, to include over 2,000 Altius-600MV autonomous anti-armor drones from Palmer Luckey’s Anduril Corporation."
The PLA and Taiwan are drawing on the harsh lessons of the Ukraine War that both short and long-range drones are essential and decisive on the battlefield.
"These acquisitions will add to the ongoing delivery of purchases made during the first Trump Administration: 400 Harpoon ground-launched anti-ship missiles; 66 new Lockheed-Martin F-16V 4+ generation jet fighters; and HIMARS launchers and ATACMS missiles," Fisher wrote.
"But as the PLA invests more heavily in drone weapons and humanoid robots, the U.S. should consider the near-term sale of U.S.-developed laser and microwave weapons, as Taipei should consider the investing in the asymmetric power of assembling militia units able to add hundreds of thousands of rifles and shoulder-launched missiles for area defense missions."
Another asymmetric response to the PLA’s robot and humanoid robot weapons, Fisher added, "would be massive use of 50-caliber anti-materiel rifles, giving reservists and militia the range and power to destroy their thin metal."
The United States, "has the near-term option to dramatically impact the CCP/PLA’s Taiwan invasion plans by surging the production of theater range missiles and by deploying tactical nuclear weapons to the Indo-Pacific theater — where today there are practically none," Fisher wrote.
In 1957 former President Dwight Eisenhower approved the deployment of tactical nuclear armed Matador cruise missiles to Taiwan to convince Mao Zedong to change his gathering plans for invasion.
"Perhaps only when Xi understands that he will lose multiple waves of 100,000 invasion troops and their equipment will he change his plans to invade the island democracy," Fisher concluded.
