China, Taiwan, and the PLA’s 2027 milestones

For several years, the US security establishment appeared fixated on the year 2027 as the deadline set by Xi Jinping to compel Taiwan with military force. First raised by then-INDOPACOM commander Admiral Phil Davidson in a 2021 congressional hearing, it was promptly dubbed “The Davidson Window”.

Senior US official statements more recently frame it as Xi seizing on 2027, the 100th anniversary of the PLA’s founding, to complete the material preparation required to make major combat operations possible, not an “invasion deadline”. For Xi, 2027 will also mark the 21st Party Congress, when he probably will secure his unprecedented fourth term as leader of the party, military, and government. The year will also end just as Taiwan’s next presidential election season is entering the home stretch before polling the following January.

While the 2027 drumbeat by senior US officials has faded, revelations in recent months of surprising and troubling advances in the modernisation of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) since 2021 compel an assessment of expectations for the next two years before the once fateful “window” opens.

• Western analysts in January 2025 identified at least two new designs for mobile bridge vessels in commercial imagery. If built in large numbers – dozens if not hundreds – they could fill a major gap in PLA invasion preparation for a war over Taiwan. They would enable China’s vast fleet of commercial car ferries, roll-on/roll-off ships, and containerised cargo ships to land heavy forces and supplies virtually anywhere on Taiwan’s coast to exploit an amphibious landing and breakout operations.
• The newest annual US Department of Defence report on Chinese military power assesses that China since 2020 has almost tripled the PLA’s inventory of precision-attack ballistic and cruise missiles to 3,500, and almost doubled its inventory of missile launchers to 1,500, enabling the PLA to strike virtually all targets in the Western Pacific, including the pivotal US base on Guam, in a single salvo.

• China is advancing preparations for potential conflict, including expanded runways, taxiways, and hardened aircraft shelter at its 90-odd PLA airfields within combat radius of Taiwan, based on groundbreaking work by Timothy Walton and Tom Shugart. Shugart also identified increased military training with commercial ships that would be crucial for any amphibious operations.
• China in December unveiled two new sixth-generation fighter-bomber aircraft, designated by Western analysts as the Chengdu J-36 and the Shenyang J-XX/J-50. Both are tailless designs to improve stealth performance. The J-36 is a large aircraft featuring three engines and a large internal weapons bay, presumably for long-range anti-air and precision strike missiles. The previous advanced fighter unveiled by China in 2011 entered low-rate production five years later, so neither of the new fighters are likely to be available by 2028, but they underscore the speed of PLA advances in multiple new weapons programs.
• The PLA is constructing a massive new wartime command centre in Beijing’s western suburbs encompassing some 1,500 acres, equivalent to 50 Pentagons (minus parking lots). Commercial imagery shows deep excavations that, when completed, will be at least 100 metres under reinforced concrete and earth. The facility also backs into a mountain that may hold even deeper sections, suggesting a wartime command function designed to survive deep penetrating munitions.

We should be prepared to be surprised by new equipment revealed by the PLA in the next 24 months, which will straddle the last year of the 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) and the first year of the 15th FYP.

What major milestones must the PLA check off to satisfy Xi, their tough task master, that it has fulfilled the physical requirements to be capable of “resolving the Taiwan issue by force”, if ordered?

• Amphibious lift and over-beach operations. The PLA has built the world’s biggest navy in terms of ship numbers, including some large amphibious vessels. It may have sufficient lift for a lodgement, but it does not have the large surplus it would need to mitigate combat losses. It could produce large numbers of more expendable vessels to land tanks or troops, known as LSTs and LSMs, and produce the newly identified bridging ships in large numbers.
• Large scale training including key civilian assets. The PLA conducts periodic air, naval, and missile drills to demonstrate its displeasure, but it has so far not conducted a realistic exercise that incorporates all the forces that would be involved in a major amphibious or blockade campaign. Joint operations appear to remain a weak point, including complex operations that include Coast Guard, Navy, and civilian assets.
• Large scale mobilisation exercises. For the Communist Party, war is an all-of-regime operation, including mass civilian mobilisation and information operations. It has stepped up urban air defence drills, but has not conducted realistic mobilisation exercises to simulate wartime conditions, especially distributed military operations from civilian ports and airfields.
• Three superiorities: Information, air, and sea dominance. The PLA has set these conditions as requirements for success in any operations against an advanced adversary like the United States. Arguably, it has made significant gains in air and sea dominance through the sheer scale and lethality of its missile, air, and anti-ship forces, but each requires complex target detection in a hostile electromagnetic environment. Information dominance entails not only disrupting enemy communication but ensuring PLA command and control throughout the conflict. A key sign would be expanded space launches and operations including proliferated Low Earth Orbit satellite constellations similar to Starlink, and counterspace operations to hold Taiwan and US communications at risk.

As these or other surprises materialise, they will blur the line between demonstrating proficiency and preparations for actual combat, at a time when US-China and cross-Strait relations seem poised for exceptionally stormy sailing.