Can the 15th Five-Year Plan Fix the People’s Liberation Army’s Procurement Bottlenecks?

China’s newly released 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) proposal, unveiled after the Fourth Party Plenum in October 2025, not only marks Beijing’s quest to achieve the People’s Liberation Army’s goal of building a so-called world-class military by 2049. As the last major planning cycle before the 2035 benchmark for “basically achieving full modernization,” the plan also reaffirms General Secretary Xi Jinping’s core priorities: operational efficiency, technological self-reliance, and the Chinese Communist Party’s absolute command.Yet the release of this aspirational document coincided with several highly political events. Following a series of high-profile dismissals, days before the Plenum, Beijing abruptly purged nine senior The post Can the 15th Five-Year Plan Fix the People’s Liberation