China accelerated missile production in 2025, with 81 listed Chinese firms disclosing they supplied key components to the country's missile industry, more than double the number recorded in 2013. Nearly 40% of those companies posted record revenues last year, with combined sales rising 20% to 189 billion yuan (US$28 billion), even as revenues among China's 300 largest listed firms declined overall.

Firms linked to China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation and China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation produced components ranging from infrared sensors and stealth coatings to fiber-optic guidance systems for cruise and ballistic missiles. The DF-21D and DF-26 antiship ballistic missiles have become the mainstay of China's anti-access/area-denial defenses.

The 2024 U.S. Department of Defense China Military Power Report estimates that the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force's arsenal grew by almost 50% over four years to about 3,500 missiles. Between 2020 and 2025, China expanded 60% of its 136 missile-related facilities, adding over 21 million square feet of floor space and identifying 99 missile manufacturing sites, of which 65 have expanded.

China is expanding and dispersing missile deployments along its eastern coast facing Taiwan, with missile brigades building larger new bases and adding launch pads and facilities for mobile launchers. Chinese forces practice launching missiles from farm fields, valleys, expressways and coastal outcrops near Taiwan. In wartime scenarios, mobile missile units would be deployed to caves and other protected sites and then moved after firing to avoid detection.

According to a Defense Priorities report, in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, China would use ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, rocket artillery, drones and airpower to suppress Taiwan's air defenses and strike radars, command-and-control nodes, airbases, naval facilities and logistics infrastructure. Chinese strike missions could number in the thousands per day initially, and China's industrial capacity would allow it to replenish missile stocks during a prolonged conflict and sustain repeated strikes on Taiwanese airfields.

According to a Stimson report, Chinese missile and artillery strikes could crater Taiwan's runways and taxiways, grounding Taiwanese fighters for days or weeks, and potentially for months if China employed more advanced missile systems or aerial bombardment. Based on modeling of DF-11 and DF-15 missile attacks, China could keep Taiwan's fighter bases closed for over two weeks, and nearly a month if long-range artillery were added. Five successful strikes could disable all operational surfaces at Ching Chuan Kang Air Base, leaving surviving aircraft unable to take off or land, and repeated follow-up strikes could keep airfields unusable during the conflict's opening phase.

According to a Heritage Foundation report, Chinese state-owned defense enterprises are producing munitions, high-end weapons systems and other equipment at rates approximately five to six times faster than their U.S. counterparts. The People's Liberation Army could plausibly surge output of selected munition types by roughly 150–250% within six to eight months of national mobilization, attributed to military-civil fusion policies, automated smart factory production lines, rapid conversion of dual-use civilian industry and access to critical inputs such as rare-earth elements and energetic materials.