PLA at 99: 'The Road to Victory' and China's Race to 2027

One year before the People's Liberation Army reaches its centenary, CGTN has begun airing a six-episode documentary that captures how far China's military has travelled since a single revolutionary spark in 1927. "The Road to Victory," released ahead of the PLA's 99th founding anniversary on August 1, walks through the modernization of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Rocket Force — and arrives at a moment when Beijing is publicly accelerating its most ambitious defense transformation yet.

PLA at 99: 'The Road to Victory' and China's Race to 2027

Beijing, July 31, 2026 — The documentary's timing is deliberate. On Thursday, President Xi Jinping presided over a Political Bureau group study session on defense modernization, telling the armed forces to build an "intelligent military system" and expand the use of unmanned technologies. The message from both the broadcast and the Politburo was the same: the countdown to 2027, the PLA's centenary modernization deadline, is now the organizing principle of Chinese military policy.

The Documentary's Ambitious Scope

"The Road to Victory" offers a comprehensive tour of a force in transition. Across six episodes, CGTN's cameras follow the PLA's four principal service branches — the Army, Navy, Air Force and Rocket Force — profiling not only new platforms but the human stories behind the mission. State media has framed the series as both a commemoration and an educational project, aimed at domestic audiences as much as international viewers watching CGTN's English-language feeds.

The choice of subjects matters. The Rocket Force, which controls China's nuclear and conventional missile arsenal, receives rare sustained attention in state media outside of parade coverage. The Navy's appearance reflects a fleet that has grown into the world's largest by hull count, with aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships and a blue-water logistics network stretching from the South China Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The Air Force segment showcases fifth-generation J-20 fighters and domestically developed transport aircraft, while the Army episodes emphasize combined-arms brigades and the plateau warfare capabilities that have been tested in the Himalayas.

From Nanchang to the Rocket Force

The anniversary itself anchors the narrative. The PLA was founded on August 1, 1927, following the Nanchang Uprising, an event the Chinese Communist Party regards as the birth of its armed forces. It fought through the Chinese Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War before becoming the military of the newly established People's Republic in 1949.

Nearly a century later, the PLA is the world's largest standing military, and the trajectory is unmistakable: from infantry revolution to a technology-driven force organized around artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, space systems and unmanned platforms. The 2027 centenary goal — which Beijing has never publicly detailed but consistently invokes — is widely read by analysts as a deadline for completing the most consequential phase of that transformation. The South China Morning Post's anniversary series notes that August 1, 2026 marks exactly one year from that target.

The human dimension the documentary foregrounds is not incidental. Chinese state media has increasingly used individual soldier stories — pilots logging carrier qualifications, rocket force crews on alert rotations, engineers maintaining plateau garrisons — to humanize an institution that outsiders often read only through the lens of hardware. The series also carries an implicit recruitment message: at a time when the PLA is competing with China's technology sector for young talent, presenting military service as technologically sophisticated and historically meaningful is a deliberate part of the communication strategy.

Xi's 'Intelligent Military System' Directive

The Politburo study session on Thursday gave the documentary its political counterpoint. Xi, speaking in his capacity as chairman of the Central Military Commission, called for strengthening "the military application of unmanned intelligent technologies," deepening the development of network information systems, and "gradually building an intelligent military system." Sun Zheng, from the strategic planning office of the Central Military Commission, delivered the briefing lecture and put forward recommendations.

The language matters. Xi stressed that combat capabilities remain "the ultimate objective and testing criterion" for high-quality defense modernization — a signal that procurement and organizational reform are to be judged by operational output, not institutional inertia. He also extended festival greetings to all PLA members, the People's Armed Police Force, civilian personnel, reserve forces and the militia.

What This Means: The 2027 Deadline

Read together, the documentary and the Politburo session frame 2027 as the pivot point of Chinese military policy. Xi said the goals for the PLA's centenary must be fulfilled on schedule, with "decisive progress" toward basically realizing the modernization of national defense and the armed forces. Beyond that horizon, Beijing's published ambitions run to 2035 — basically achieving defense modernization — and 2049, the centenary of the People's Republic, when the PLA is meant to become a "world-class" military.

The emphasis on unmanned and intelligent systems is not rhetorical. China has invested heavily in military drones, from loitering munitions to high-altitude reconnaissance platforms, and has been developing autonomous capabilities across the services. Defense analysts in Tokyo, Washington and Taipei will parse Xi's wording for signals about force structure — particularly whether the "intelligent military system" language presages a new command architecture or a major procurement push in AI-enabled systems before the 2027 deadline.

The documentary itself is part of the information campaign surrounding that deadline. Broadcasting a six-part series in English on the eve of the anniversary lets Beijing frame the modernization narrative on its own terms — emphasizing professionalism, human stories and defensive intent — before Western commentary sets the agenda. It is soft power with a hard deadline attached.

The Corruption Purge and Command Accountability

The study session also carried a reminder that modernization has a political price. Xi called for sustained progress in the military's anti-corruption campaign, which has removed several senior commanders, including members of the Central Military Commission and two former defense ministers. He urged improved supervision of major projects, ensuring that initiatives are "underpinned by quality, capability and integrity."

For outside observers, the purge is a double-edged signal. On one hand, it demonstrates the party's control over the officer corps and its determination to clean up procurement. On the other, the removal of top commanders during a modernization drive creates uncertainty at the highest levels of the defense establishment — a factor regional militaries must weigh when assessing PLA readiness and decision-making.

Regional Ripple Effects: An East Asian View

From Tokyo's perspective, the anniversary messaging is carefully calibrated. Chinese state media presents the PLA as a defensive force and a "pillar of global peace," emphasizing shared security and multilateralism. Beijing points to the PLA's long-running naval escort missions in the Gulf of Aden — operating continuously since 2008 — and its status as one of the largest contributors of troops to UN peacekeeping operations as evidence of that posture. But Japan's Ministry of Defense, in its annual white papers, has described China's military buildup as the most significant challenge to the regional security environment, pointing to activity in the East China Sea and around the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

The documentary's timing — landing as Japan and other regional states finalize their own defense budgets — is unlikely to be coincidental. China's defense spending has grown steadily for nearly three decades, and the 2027 centenary is expected to bring further increases as Beijing closes capability gaps in air defense, anti-submarine warfare and power projection. For Southeast Asian nations, the question is less about China's intentions than about the pace of change: a PLA that reaches its centenary goals on schedule will be qualitatively different from the force of a decade ago.

The Structural Reforms Behind the Hardware

The modernization on display in "The Road to Victory" did not begin with new weapons. Between 2015 and 2017, Beijing carried out the most sweeping reorganization of the PLA since its founding: the four general departments were dissolved, the seven military regions were replaced by five theater commands, and a new joint operations structure was built around the Central Military Commission. The Army's share of the force was cut by 300,000 personnel as the Navy, Air Force and Rocket Force absorbed the savings.

That reorganization explains why Xi could tell the Politburo that the PLA has made "historic achievements" and undergone "historic transformations" since the 18th Party Congress in 2012. The structural changes were the prerequisite for the doctrinal changes now being pursued — combined-arms operations, joint command, and the intelligent systems that the study session placed at the center of the next phase. The documentary's focus on the four services is, in this reading, a report card on a decade of restructuring.

What to Watch For

Three markers will define the next twelve months. First, whether Beijing announces a large-scale commemoration for the centenary itself — a major parade or military exercise would signal confidence in the modernization program. Second, the pace of AI integration: watch for new organizational units, doctrinal publications and procurement contracts tied to unmanned systems before 2027. Third, the trajectory of the anti-corruption campaign — a stable command structure is a precondition for the ambitious timelines Beijing has set.

"The Road to Victory" is a portrait, but it is also a promise. The PLA that celebrates its 99th anniversary this weekend is presenting itself as a force that has already won its past — and is now racing toward a future defined by machines, networks and intelligence. Whether that race stays on schedule, and how the region responds, will shape Asian security for the rest of the decade.

By Kenji Tanaka, Staff Writer

This article was produced with AI-assisted research and editorial support. Reporting is based on sources cited in the article.