China’s People’s Liberation Army is waging information warfare that is regarded as a key element of military power and crucial for battlefield combat, according to a report by an Air Force think tank.

“The PLA sees the ‘information domain’ as a domain of war unto itself, equal to the physical domains of air, land, sea, and space,” states the report by the China Aerospace Studies Institute made public this week.

Chinese hard power military operations are used to support information warfare operations.

“For the PLA, superiority in the information domain is necessary to seize and maintain battlefield initiative, and information dominance has become a prerequisite to being able to achieve decisive effects in any of the physical domains,” the report said.

By contrast, the U.S. military and those of other democratic states consider information “as the connective tissue that links and binds all of the other domains,” the report said.

The U.S. and other militaries regard information as serving roles similar to military logistics and supply chains.

Information systems help military forces synchronize and unify efforts in the physical war fighting areas, including cyberspace.

It is a supporting function, not a stand-alone power, the report said.

The report said U.S. military planners and theorists must appreciate the role of information in PLA war fighting to understand how China wages war in the information arena. The PLA is described as “the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)” and aggressively uses information and propaganda to pursue its goals.

“For Communist parties, the ultimate goal is to transform, or control, the minds of the people,” the report said. “While this can be accomplished for limited times by force, ultimately it is through controlling the narrative, shaping perceptions, and crafting information.”

Communist regimes control and use information to gain and maintain control over society and also shape conditions for the future. This is needed by China to achieve its goals.

Under President Xi Jinping, China has declared its strategic goal is “national rejuvenation.” The Pentagon widely views this goal as China seeking to usurp the U.S. role as the global superpower setting international rules and norms.

A key CCP tool is the Propaganda Department, often mistranslated as the Publicity Department, the report said. The agency is dedicated to controlling the narrative, framing history, and shaping people’s minds.

“In essence, the CCP employs the Propaganda Department to wage war in the battlefield of the mind, i.e. the information domain,” the report said.

The propaganda organ works closely with the PLA’s Political Work Department, a unit of the CCP Central Military Commission that controls the military.

As a party army, the PLA draws on all external political organizations to shape, manage, control, and ultimately fight in, the information domain. That type of warfare is not employed by the U.S. and its allies.

The PLA also operates together with the party’s United Front Work Department, a critical global influence and intelligence organization that analysts say is funded with the equivalent of several billion dollars. For PLA psychological warfare, China’s military is studying cognitive warfare — how to shape how information is received and processed in the human brain.

“The PLA recognizes that warfare in the modern age is not limited to the physical battlefield, and that it must be postured and actively engaged across the information domain, both before and during conflict,” the report said.

Chinese military outposts in the South China Sea are part of preparations to take control of the waterway. Military activities around Taiwan also are part of information warfare called “gray zone operations.”

“Suffice it to say that the PLA is right now, as you read this, actively engaged in operations in the Information Domain, attempting to shape the cognitive battlefield, even before the first kinetic shots of whatever the next conflict may be, are fired,” the report concludes.

The study was authored by Brendan S. Mulvaney, director of the Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute.

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.