中国有文献记载的军事史最早可以追溯至约公元前2200年左右，并一直延续至今。中国的军事史大致可以分为两个阶段，即1911年辛亥革命推翻君主专制时代之前的中国古代军事史，以及包括中华民国军事和中华人民共和国军事在内等中国现代军事史。

近现代之前

尽管中国传统的儒家思想大体上更倾向于主张和平的政治解决方案，并对野蛮的兵事和战乱加以鄙夷，但军事和军队本身在中国的历朝历代均有着不小的影响力。中国人率先使用弩、早期火药武器和其他先进武器，并先于世界将兵器与铠甲的冶金制造过程进行标准化，同时也多次引进和采用了游牧民族的骑兵战法和西方的军事技术。 此外，历代中国军队还受益于先进的后勤系统以及丰富的战法和策略传统，后者从《孙子兵法》的时代开始便深刻影响了中国的军事思想。

现代

解放军

随着中国人民解放军及其前身自1927年国共内战爆发以来从最初的一支农民游击队武装逐渐发展成为世界上规模最为庞大的军事力量，中国的军事史在20世纪期间经历了巨大的转变。

国军

中华民国的陆军武装成立于1924年，前身为国民革命军，是当时由孙中山领导的国民党下属的武装力量。曾参加过北伐战争、第二次中日战争以及第二次国共内战。该军队在中华民国行宪之后改组为了中华民国陆军至今，并于1949年随中华民国政府撤往台湾。1949年以后，中华民国陆军参加了金门群岛、大陈岛中发生的与解放军之间的作战行动，如古宁头战役、第一次和第二次台海危机等。除了这些重大冲突之外，国军的陆军突击队还定期袭击福建和广东沿海。直到20世纪70年代末，中华民国陆军的既定使命仍然是从中华人民共和国手中夺回中国大陆。随着1988年解除戒严以及90年代的民主化，中华民国陆军的使命已转变为保卫台湾本岛、澎湖列岛、金门以及马祖免遭解放军的入侵。

近年来，随着中华民国武装力量在规模上的缩减，陆军遭受到了最大程度的裁军，因为中华民国的军事条令开始强调与海军和空军进行近海交战的重要性。经过这次重点转变，中华民国海军和空军在国防理论和武器采购方面优先于中华民国陆军。 陆军近期的短期目标包括采购和开发联合指挥和控制系统、先进攻击直升机和装甲车、多管火箭炮和野战防空系统。陆军也正在向全志愿役部队过渡。

参见
 中国战争列表

参考文献

书目
For earlier periods, see Military history of China before 1912 (Further reading)

概述
 Elleman, Bruce A. Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795–1989. New York: Routledge, 2001.
 Graff, David Andrew, and Robin Higham, eds. A military history of China (University Press of Kentucky, 2012).
 
 Li, Xiaobing, ed. China at War: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2012. online
 Liu, Frederick Fu. A Military History of Modern China, 1924-1949 (1972).
 Lorge, Peter. “Discovering War in Chinese History.” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 1 38 (2014): 21–46.
 Mitter, Rana. "Modernity, internationalization, and war in the history of modern China." Historical Journal  (2005) 48#2 pp. 523–543 online.
 Swope, Kenneth, ed. Warfare in China since 1600 (Routledge, 2017).
 Wilkinson, Endymion. “War.” In Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, pp. 339–62. 5th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.
 Worthing, Peter M. “China's Modern Wars, 1911–Present.” Oxford Online Bibliographies, 2011.
 --. A Military History of Modern China: From the Manchu Conquest to Tian’anmen Square. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2007.
 Wortzel, Larry M., and Robin Higham. Dictionary of contemporary Chinese military history (ABC-Clio, 1999).

清中期至1912年
 Elman, Benjamin A. “Naval Warfare and the Refraction of China's Self-Strengthening Reforms into Scientific and Technological Failure, 1865–1895.” Modern Asian Studies 2 (2004): 283–326.
 Elliott, Jane E. Some Did It for Civilisation, Some Did It for Their Country: A Revised View of the Boxer War. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2002.
 Fung, Allen. “Testing the Self-Strengthening: The Chinese Army in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895.” Modern Asian Studies 4 (1996): 1007–31.
 Halsey, Stephen R. Quest for Power: European Imperialism and the Making of Chinese Statecraft. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
 Klein, Thoralf. “The Boxer War-the Boxer Uprising.” Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence (2008). Online massacre-resistance/en/document/boxer-war-boxer-uprising.
 Mao Haijian,The Qing Empire and the Opium War: The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty , translated by Joseph Lawson, Craig Smith and Peter Lavelle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. (Orig, Tianchao de bengkui. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1995).
 Paine, S. C. M. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895: Perceptions, Power and Primacy.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
 Platt, Stephen R. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2012.
 Thompson, Roger R. “Military Dimensions of the ‘Boxer Uprising’ in Shanxi, 1898–1901.” In Warfare in Chinese History, edited by Hans van de Ven, 288–320. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
 Waley-Cohen, Joanna. The Culture of War in China: Empire and the Military under the Qing Dynasty. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006.

1912年-1937年
 Chan, Anthony B. Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China, 1920–1928 . 2nd ed. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010.
 Jordan, Donald A. The Northern Expedition: China's National Revolution of 1926–1928. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1976.
 ——. China's Trial by Fire: The Shanghai War of 1932. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2001.
 Diana Lary, “Warlord Studies.” Modern China 4 (1980):439–70. State of the field article.
 McCord, Edward Allen. The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
 Waldron, Arthur. From War to Nationalism: China's Turning Point, 1924–1925. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
 ——. “The Warlord: Twentieth Chinese Understandings of Violence, Militarism, and Imperialism.” The American Historical Review 4 (1991): 1073–1100.

中日战争时期
 Chang, Jui-te. “Nationalist Army Officers during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945.” Modern Asian Studies 4 (1996): 1033–56.
 ———. “The National Army from Whampoa to 1949.” In A Military History of China, edited by David A. Graff and Robin D. S. Higham, 193– 209. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2012.
 Ford, Daniel. Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group. 2nd edition. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2007. 
 Gordon, David M. “The China-Japan War, 1931–1945.” The Journal of Military History 1 (2006): 137–82. Bibliographical essay.
 Hagiwara Mitsuru. “The Japanese Air Campaigns in China, 1937– 1945.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013, 237– 55. 
 Harmsen, Peter. Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangzi. Oxford: Casemate, 2013.
 Haruo, Tohmatsu. “The Strategic Correlation Between the Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven, 423–45. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.
 Hattori Satoshi with Edward J. Drea, “Japanese Operations from July to December 1937.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven, 159–80. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.
 Lary, Diana. “Defending China: The Battles of the Xuzhou Campaign.” In Warfare in Chinese History, edited by Hans van de Ven, Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 398–427.
 Lew, Christopher R. The Third Chinese Revolutionary Civil War, 1945–49: An Analysis of Communist Strategy and Leadership (Routledge, 2009).
 Mitter, Rana. "Old ghosts, new memories: China's changing war history in the era of post-Mao politics." Journal of Contemporary History 38.1 (2003): 117–131.
 Lary, Diana. “Defending China: The Battles of the Xuzhou Campaign.” In Warfare in Chinese History, edited by Hans van de Ven,  Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp 398–427.
 Li, Chen. “The Chinese Army in the First Burma Campaign.” Journal of Chinese Military History 2 (2013): 43–73.
 MacKinnon, Stephen R. “The Defense of the Central Yangtze.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven, 181–206. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.
 ——, with Diana Lary, and Ezra F. Vogel, eds. China at War: Regions of China, 1937–45. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.
 ——. Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
 Macri, Franco David. Clash of Empires in South China: The Allied Nations’ Proxy War with Japan, 1935–1941 . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015.
 Martin, Bernd. “The Role of German Military Advisers on the Chinese Defense Efforts Against the Japanese, 1937–1938.” In Resisting Japan: Mobilizing for War in Modern China, 1935–1945, edited by David Pong, 55–78. Norwalk: EastBridge, 2008.
 Mitter, Rana. Forgotten Ally: China ’s World War II, 1937 –1945 . Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
 Peattie, Mark R., Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven, eds. The Battle for China:Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.
 Phillips, Steve. “A Selected Bibliography of English Language Sources.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 , edited by Mark R.Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011, pp 371-76.
 Spector, Ronald. “The Sino-Japanese War in the Context of World History.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011, pp. 467-81.
 Takeshi, Hara. “The Ichigō Offensive.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011, pp, 392– 402
 Tow, Edna. “The Great Bombing of Chongqing and the Anti-Japanese War, 1937– 1945.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven, 237–55. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011, pp. 237-55.
 Van de Ven, Hans. “The Sino-Japanese War in History.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 , edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven, 446–66. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.
 ——. China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China, 1937 - 1952 . London: Profile Books, 2017; Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 2018.
 van Slyke, Lyman P. “The Battle of the Hundred Regiments: Problems of Coordination and Control during the Sino-Japanese War.” Modern Asian Studies 4 (1996): 979–1005.
 Wang, Qisheng. “Battle of Hunan and The Chinese Military's Response to Operation Ichigō.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 , edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011, pp. 403-18.
 Yang, Kuisong. “Nationalist and Communist Guerilla Warfare in North China.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 –1945 , edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011, pp 308–27.
 Yang, Tianshi. “Chiang Kai-shek and the Battles of Shanghai and Nanjing.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011, pp. 143-158.
 Yu, Maochun. The Dragon's War: Allied Operations and the Fate of China, 1937 –1947. New York: Naval Institute Press, 2013.
 Zang, Yunhu. “Chinese Operations in Yunnan and Central Burma.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 –1945, edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011, pp. 386-91.
 Zhang, Baijia. “China's Quest for Foreign Military Aid.” In The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven, 283– 307. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.

内战时期：1945年-1949年

 Tanner, Harold Miles. "Guerrilla, mobile, and base warfare in Communist military operations in Manchuria, 1945-1947." Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003): 1177-1222 online.
 Tanner, Harold M. Where Chiang Kai-Shek Lost China: The Liao-Shen Campaign, 1948 (Indiana University Press, 2015).

1949年之后
 O'Dowd, Edward C. Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War: The Last Maoist War (Routledge, 2007).
 Ryan, Mark A., David Michael Finkelstein, and Michael A. McDevitt. Chinese Warfighting: the PLA experience since 1949 (ME Sharpe, 2003).
 Wortzel, Larry M. The dragon extends its reach: Chinese military power goes global (Potomac Books,  2013).