The Rise of Wargaming Competitions in the Chinese Navy An Assessment

In recent years, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has embraced competitive conflict simulation as an approach to train and educate the officer corps for future high-end naval combat. The PLAN regards these wargaming competitions as a useful means to popularise wargaming across the service, thereby allowing more personnel to benefit from conflict simulation. These benefits include increased understanding of the challenges the PLAN would face in a high-end naval conflict and opportunities to hone command leadership skills. Ryan D Martinson argues that although large-scale adoption of wargaming methodologies may achieve some of these anticipated benefits, there are also several likely drawbacks to this approach.