Watching the lavish military parade in Beijing on Wednesday, retired army general Mick Ryan was struck by the broad sweep of Chinese military capabilities on display. There were ballistic missiles, lasers, fighter jets, underwater drones, tanks and even “robot wolves”.

“Most of the weapons and platforms were not brand-new, but generally, every land, air and sea platform was more modern than that in the inventories of Western military organisations,” Ryan wrote on his Substack soon after the event.

“The PLA displayed an array of modern offensive and defensive capabilities, all of which would be useful in a Chinese military campaign against Taiwan or other regional adversaries,” Ryan said following the parade.

Sam Roggeveen, director of the Lowy Institute’s international security program, agreed that military planners in Washington, DC and Canberra would be unnerved, if not necessarily surprised, by the assets on show.

Loading

“It is no longer enough to say that China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), is catching up, or that it is copying foreign military equipment designs,” he wrote in Foreign Policy.

“China is now innovating, and it is leading. In the process, the regional military balance that has for decades favoured the United States and its partners is being irrevocably changed.”