In an analysis, RSIS Visiting Senior Fellow Richard Bitzinger wrote about how the COVID-19 pandemic has blunted but not stopped Chinese military modernisation. Defence spending increases may be less but military procurement and R&D (particularly in the realm of artificial intelligence) are proceeding unabated, and China is still on track to becoming a world-class military power by 2049, he wrote.

…Richard A. Bitzinger is a Visiting Senior Fellow with the Military Transformations Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. This is part of an RSIS Series.