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It is now widely accepted that the story Western countries once told themselves about China’s technological development—it is a mere imitator of Western technology; it steals intellectual property; its successes result from wasteful public subsidies—is inadequate. This story still has some elements of truth, but it is much less true than it used to be. China is today an innovator and technological leader in robotics, electric vehicles, nuclear reactors, solar energy, drones, high-speed rail, and AI.

If confirmation were needed, the Sept. 3 military parade through Beijing confirms that we must add military technology to this list. It is no longer enough to say that China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), is catching up, or that it is copying foreign military equipment designs. China is now innovating, and it is leading. In the process, the regional military balance that has for decades favored the United States and its partners is being irrevocably changed.

Soldiers rehearse prior to the military parade in Beijing on Sept. 3.Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Among the highlights was the display of aircraft that will serve aboard China’s growing fleet of aircraft carriers, which numbers three ships at present but is likely to be joined in coming years by at least one nuclear-powered supercarrier, just as large and capable as the U.S. Navy’s new Gerald Ford class. Four new types of “loyal wingman” drones were unveiled—stealthy unpiloted planes designed to fly alongside crewed aircraft and be tasked by them. And at least four previously unseen anti-ship and ground-attack missile systems were on display, as well as a new uncrewed submarine and new torpedoes.

The parade provided just the latest revelations in a frantic year for observers of China’s military-industrial complex. Just after Christmas in 2024, grainy video and photos began to appear on social media of two new stealthy combat aircraft in test flights. A few weeks later, Naval News reported that China was constructing a unique type of powered barge with extendable road bridges that could allow vehicle-carrying ships to unload their cargo at an unprepared coastal site. Subsequent photos of the barges in testing confirmed that they would be ideally suited to putting heavy armor ashore in an invasion of Taiwan.

Then, in late January, the Financial Times published commercial satellite photos showing that China was constructing a new military command center outside Beijing that is at least 10 times the size of the Pentagon. In May, Pakistan and India staged an aerial battle involving 125 aircraft over disputed Kashmir; Pakistan’s air force used Chinese equipment that appeared, on limited evidence, to have performed credibly.

China shows every indication of wanting a fully home-grown military-industrial complex. And China’s leadership has publicly stated its ambition to build a worldwide first-class military by the middle of the century. Of course, that requires more than just technology, and the recent rash of senior officer purges suggests that there are serious corruption and performance problems in the PLA.

But on the technological front, at least, there has long been ample evidence of ambition. China began its modernization in the early 1990s, and since then, the PLA has undergone arguably the most rapid technological transformation of any military force since World War II. The revelations since December 2024 only reinforce this trend and should prompt the question of whether China’s ambitions are still being underestimated.

The bigger question is, what does China want with all that military power?

One possibility is that it is building a force to directly challenge the United States with a truly global military posture. Distant Australia got a taste of China’s new capabilities in February when the PLA Navy sent a flotilla of warships to circumnavigate the continent. It sent a message that China’s military power now has new reach.

Yet if there is a broad conclusion to be drawn from the revelations of the past nine months, it is that China is not solely or even primarily focused on projecting its military power around the Pacific, much less the world. Much of the new equipment we are seeing is not explicitly designed for that purpose.

Of course, such equipment can be put to many uses. And there is no question that over the last few decades, China has substantially grown its capacity to use military power over long distances. It is building a formidable fleet of strategic airlifters, allowing it to fly personnel and equipment around the globe quickly. More recently, it has begun to grow its aerial refueling fleet; such a fleet has long been a key attribute of the United States’ ability to project air power globally. And China now has dozens of “blue water” warships designed to operate in the open ocean (as opposed to “brown water” coastal vessels), including aircraft carriers and replenishment ships to keep the fleet at sea.

But then, consider that China has not added to the single overseas base it opened in Djibouti in 2017; it is years away from fielding a bomber with intercontinental range; and it has nothing like the global alliance network of the United States. The new fighter aircraft, landing barges, drones, and missile systems that have emerged this year don’t suggest an overwhelming focus on global power projection either. They will primarily strengthen China’s position in its neighborhood.

The focus should therefore be on China’s regional ambitions rather than its global presence. That is particularly bad news for Taiwan, because the military balance there is clearly swinging further in Beijing’s favor. A recent paper in the most respected academic journal in strategic studies, International Security, examined the trend lines and offered some alarming conclusions for Taipei and for those in Washington who argue that the United States has a vital interest in defending Taiwan. In “Access Denied? The Sino-American Contest for Military Primacy in Asia,” Nicholas Anderson and Daryl Press argue that the lynchpin of U.S. military power in Asia—its combat aircraft based in Japan and Guam—would suffer catastrophic losses in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

The paper develops a model of the damage that would be done to U.S. air bases by China’s large (and still growing) stocks of short- and medium-range missiles in the first 30 days of such a war. It concludes that even in the most favorable scenario, the United States would lose 45% of its force in that first month. And it is worth emphasizing that the paper looks only at the effects of Chinese missiles fired from land bases; it does not consider the effect of additional strikes from China’s air force and navy.

Anderson and Press offer various suggestions for how the United States can correct this growing imbalance, though none seem particularly promising. Ultimately, they suggest that a more fundamental rethink of U.S. strategy could be in order. Washington should consider moving from a mindset of military dominance to one of being a supporting player in the region.

“That a distant great power is the dominant military actor in East Asia may not be a long-term equilibrium, given the economic and technical might of other Asian countries,” the authors conclude. This is an understatement, especially when one considers how strange the world would look if the U.S. and Chinese roles were reversed. If China was the predominant power in the Western hemisphere, permanently garrisoning 70,000 troops in Canada and an aircraft carrier battle group in Cuba, that would indeed look very far from a “long-term equilibrium.”

Y-20 planes fly over the Temple of Heaven during the military parade in Beijing on Sept. 3. Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images

Finally, if those barriers were overcome, China would almost certainly respond with increased military spending of its own. And as the military parade in Beijing reminded the world this week, an arms race would now play to Beijing’s strengths, not to Washington’s. A new equilibrium is indeed taking shape; U.S. military strategy and foreign policy must follow.