A Clearer Warning: The Pentagon’s 2025 China Report
From Taiwan to Total War to Nuclear growth, what the Pentagon’s latest assessment reveals about Beijing’s plans for conflict.
This year, from a different administration, the Pentagon’s Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2025 (the China Military Power Report, or CMPR) slipped quietly into the public domain two days before Christmas. The 2025 report is notably shorter and sharper in its assessment, arriving as the PRC continues its long-declared objective of fielding a world-class military and continues to challenge the long-standing international order.
As a reminder, the report is a Congressionally mandated report that is a retrospective capture of the year preceding its publication. In this case, the 2025 report largely reflects developments from 2024, but it does incorporate information from 2025 up to the publication cut-off. The primary congressional recipients include the relevant Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. Produced in both unclassified and classified versions, the CMPR serves as a key resource in the national security policy development process, though only the public-domain version is available for review.
The CMPR is far from the only input available to Congress and policymakers. That said, this report offers the reader the best single, one-volume treatment of the PRC’s military. It captures the size, scope, and reality of today’s and tomorrow’s national security challenges.
Before reading, I like to skim a report and sample a few key sections. With last year’s report in mind, I had four immediate impressions:
