Dinner - China’s Powerful Military: Realities for Taiwan, the U.S. & Beyond

With Miles Yu, Ph.D., is one of America’s leading scholars and strategists on China, East Asia, military history, and U.S.-China relations. Dinner included Over the last few and momentous decades, most are familiar with the historic and unparalleled growth of China’s economy and global influence. Yet, many may not consider, that along with becoming one of the world’s two largest economies and geopolitical powerhouses, the CCP has developed a massive and modern military, that is only rivaled by the U.S. With unprecedented speed, spending, scale and capability, China’s PLA (People’s Liberation Army – which encompasses all branches of the military) has become an extremely vast and powerful fighting force, which is steadily active across much of Asia and beyond. The PLA has about 2.2 Million active duty personnel – almost double the number of U.S. active duty personnel. In order to become a modern, large and lethal force, China’s defense spending has multiplied an astonishing 13 times, just since the 1990s. With regards to China’s potent military and the challenges it presents for the U.S. and its allies in Asia, very few are as knowledgeable and aware as Dr. Miles Yu. Having served as the principal China policy adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and teaching in his now third decade at the United States Naval Academy, Yu’s first-hand insights into U.S. defense policy and the PLA are unmatched. Dr. Yu will discuss the incredible rise and ongoing modernization of China’s military and the CCP’s potential war planning for Taiwan, the South China Sea and possible conflict in Korea. He will also address how the possible U.S. military theater of East Asia may be shaped by AI, cyberwarfare, the control of vital rare earth minerals, and U.S. relations with South Korea, Japan, Australia & other critical allies in the Pacific.