Geopolitics

Military – Civil Fusion Strategy of China
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Issue Vol. 37.1, Jan-Mar 2022 | Date : 27 Apr , 2022

The ideas, decisions and plans of military and civilian integration must be fully implemented in all fields of national economic and defence construction and in the whole processes. The integration should value national socialist advantage of pooling resources to solve major problems and raising working efficiency. The integration must combine state guidance with the market’s role, and comprehensively employ institutional innovation, policy support and legal guarantee to give full play to military and civilian integration.” — Xi-Jinping, 20 Jun 20171

Relations between the civilian establishment and military have been symbiotic over centuries in all countries. The broad consensus everywhere is that civilian control is desirable. The military needs to be strong enough to ensure the stability of the civilian government and stay away from assuming control even when it perceives that the civilian government is going wrong.

These civil-military relations have different flavours in different countries. In most democracies, it is driven by the civilian government. It is transactional and relates to cooperation in various fields including research and development, growth of military industrial complex and aid to civil authorities, when requisitioned. In authoritarian states, it is driven by the military with the civilian government heavily dependent on it to ensure the existence and stability of the government. A strong military is a prerequisite for the security of the nation which in turn promotes and provides socio-economic development. However, there have been a few distinct developments in the past few decades.

One, there has been a dramatic increase in overall defence budgets of countries. It has reached a figure of $1981 billion in 2020, with the US leading at $778 billion and China following at $252 billion.2 This has led to development of a massive defence industrial complex in many nations. Secondly, many of the technologies in use today have originated from the military e.g. Internet, rockets and Global Positioning System (GPS). There are great benefits too for military modernisation. It can save funds invested in R&D, production, lead to shorter term development cycles and thereby reduce risk to civilian industries too. This can take place at three levels – facility, firm and sector. Personnel equipment and materials could be shared by facilities or even manufacture military and civilian goods side by side. At the Firm-level, integration involves separate production lines and the joint military-civilian use of corporate resources such as management, labour, and equipment. Finally, integrated industrial sectors such as aerospace or shipbuilding can draw from a common pool of research and development activities, technologies and production processes.3

Thirdly, in nations such as Russia, China and India, the defence R&D and production has been dominated by State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Heavily funded and supported by the state, these monoliths are slow to react to rapid changes in technology and have poor efficiency.

Military-Civil Fusion (junminronghe) or MCF, has evolved from Civil-Military Integration (junminjiehe) and is a complex set of initiatives by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to share resources between the military and civilian industry. As in many other cases, it has been largely inspired by the US military-industrial complex which dominates the global arms industry and helps project the US as a pre-eminent global superpower. A core focus of the MCF is the effort to leverage technological expertise from the civilian sector in order to benefit the development of advanced weapons systems and other equipment for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). However, MCF is much more than that: it also embraces a broad set of organisational changes and information-sharing mechanisms intended to break down barriers between China’s military and commercial sectors – with the ultimate aim of sharing resources and expertise from both sides, while keeping these efforts firmly under state direction. Whether this ambitious programme succeeds or fails, will have significant implications for the course of Chinese military modernisation as well as for the future direction of China’s high-technology and other emerging industrial sectors.4

This paper aims to carry out an analysis of MCF in the following parts:–

    • Strategy and Policies
    • Implementation
    • Chinese quest for advanced technologies

MCF Strategy

“Greater efforts have to be invested in military modernisation to meet national security demands. The PLA still lags far behind the world’s leading militaries.” —China’s 2019 Defence White Paper5

As is well known, the Chinese state and military are closely intertwined and in fact, the PLA is an Army of the party and not of the nation. The People’s Republic of China was born out of a revolution in which the PLA has had a major role. Since its inception, every Chinese leader has pursued some form of synergy between the two. No discussion on MCF can happen without co-relating it to evolution of PLA’s military strategy which has moved from ‘People’s War’ to ‘Intelligentised Warfare’.6 This has led to the PLA laying greater emphasis on technology as a battle-winning factor and requiring greater cooperation with industry and R&D institutions.

In the initial years, the focus was on development of the industrial base. They were weighing in on balancing the need between security and development. The military role post the Korean War was envisaged to be assisting development of the nation through dual use production lines. Civilian products coming out of defence industry manufacturing bases constituted up to 3/4th of their total production.7 With Deng Xiaoping at the helm and the focus on development through ‘four modernisations’, military development took a back seat. He also believed that Soviet-inspired defence industrial base was wasteful and restricted development.8

Three major factors in subsequent years necessitated change in this policy. The Tiananmen massacre in 1989 resulted in sanctions being imposed on China and thus necessitated a move towards self-reliance. Secondly, this almost coincided with the breakup of the USSR, which was a major arms supplier to China thereby causing a disruption in modernisation of the PLA. A related aspect was that with the breakup of the USSR, the world order was in turmoil and moving towards being uni-polar which was not what China would have liked and it has since then attempted to occupy that space. Thirdly, the Gulf War demonstrated the disruptive impact of a technologically superior military to PLA analysts.

Jiang Zemin was instrumental in aligning technological developments with military strategy and laid out his policy of ‘winning local wars under informatised conditions’. This was also the first time that the scope of the MCF was expanded beyond industry to include infrastructure, logistics, education and exploring dual use technologies. Hu Jintao era also led to a change in terminology from ‘integration’ to ‘fusion-style’. This era also coincided with great strides in economic and technological developments in the PRC and influenced the MCF by way of more integration and greater scope.

While Xi Jinping first spoke of MCF in March 2014, at the 2nd session of the 12th National People Congress (NPC), most consider his remarks in the 3rd session of the NPC in March 2015, as the watershed for evolution of MCF into a National Strategy.9 A major aspect covered towards implementation of the MCF was the financial resources earmarked for it. The total of these funds is estimated to be over $68.5 billion in anticipated investment over many years.10 While the sum may appear large, like all government figures, these cannot be taken at face value as these might be inflated or include expenditure on aspects not directly related to the MCF. The additional issue of leakages, mismanagement and possibility of these being appropriated by State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), the exact opposite of what they were to do, exists.

The Chinese strength (and weakness too) has been the state-controlled top-down planning and implementation of various strategies. They studied the US model and modified it to suit their own environment. The importance given to MCF can be gauged from the involvement of Xi Jinping himself in a number of bodies created to implement it. At the first plenary meeting of the Central Commission for Integrated Military and Civilian Development held on June 20, 2017, Xi Jinping identified areas for MCF. These included infrastructure, national defence-related sci-tech industry, weapon and equipment procurement, talent cultivation, socialisation of the support system for the military, as well as the mobilisation for national defence.11

Infrastructure

China, like many other nations, believes in creating dual use infrastructure which could be for both civilian and military use as and when the need arises. These include highways which could be used for landing military aircraft, common space infrastructure and so on. This also diffuses the funding and the assets created are better utilised. MCF efforts in infrastructure cover the following broad areas:–

    • Transportation Infrastructure
    • Airways
    • Railways
    • Highways
    • Sea lanes and Waterways
    • Space Infrastructure
    • Information Infrastructure
    • Telegraphic Infrastructure
    • Weather Infrastructure
    • Standardisation Infrastructure

Military Personnel Talent Cultivation

With increasing modernisation, the PLA realises the importance of increasing the threshold of technical education to military personnel. These efforts are aimed at officers and NCOs equally and carried out through two means:

Military Institutions: This includes 34 officers Institutions which have been optimised in June 2017 from 63 and three NCOs Institutions reduced from four earlier.12 The scope includes basic military training and professional military education throughout the service including advanced science and technology subjects besides warfare.

Civil Universities: As the Chinese military modernises and yet continues with the conscription system, it grapples with military personnel handling increasingly sophisticated equipment with shorter training cycles. This is being overcome by having more university graduates joining PLA. In The past two decades or so, there has also been an enhanced emphasis on attracting better talent graduating from universities. This again has been for both officers and NCOs and considering the short conscription period, is vital for quick absorption of understanding of military equipment by personnel. The added benefit being that this large pool of trained and educated PLA personnel once de-mobilised, will enhance the understanding of military requirements and foster better relations with the PLA.

The other aspect is that these universities undertake research in military related technologies or dual-use technologies. This provides scope for diffused funding under non-military heads and retains the advantage of access to cutting edge research. China has designated 12 of the country’s top universities to build “schools of future technology” in yet another move by the country to become a global science and technology powerhouse. The prestigious Peking University and Tsinghua University in Beijing are among the first batch of higher education institutions designated by the Ministry of Education to establish new schools focused on building China’s advantage in frontier technologies.13

Military – Civil Science and Technology Coordination and Innovation

The Chinese military technology acquisition has been primarily through imitation of foreign military equipment either through procuring and then copying the platforms or through acquisition of designs and processes through illegal means. The term ‘zizhuchuangxin’ therefore has metamorphosed from ‘indigenous innovation’ to ‘self-initiated innovation’ and could include both original innovations or use the Introduce, Digest, Assist and Re-innovation (IDAR) approach to maximise the capabilities. There has also been a parallel movement to enhance the Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) to legitimise and encourage innovations.

The Innovation process has suffered from the monopoly of SOEs which are loathe to any changes and have a weak R&D base. China has, therefore, lagged behind in ‘Original’ innovation as compared to the other countries, though it has been improving its ranking. Innovations are also mostly coming from start-ups, as is the trend worldwide. These are staffed by smarter, bolder and younger people and are nimbler and cheaper. Harnessing their niche expertise into the military, however, is challenging due to the military bureaucracy and dominance of SOEs.

The investment in start-ups has not been restricted to China itself, but the Chinese have been heavily investing in start-ups in the US, Israel and also India. The year 2019, for example, saw 94 percent increase in Chinese cash flow into Indian start-ups to $3,916 million from $2020 million in 2018, which itself is a seven-fold jump from $459 million in 2016.14 As per reports, 18 out of 30 Unicorns of India are heavily backed by Chinese investment, though this figure is changing due to restrictions put in by the Indian government over past few years.15 These investments are for multiple reasons. Availability of funds with Chinese venture capital funds and the lack of it with Indian start-ups, the technical expertise offered, inroads into Indian industry and last but not the least, access to large Indian datasets.

In March 2017, the PLA for the first time in its history, declassified more than 3,000 dual-use technology patents and released 2,346 to the public in an effort to increase transparency, incentivise innovation and facilitate defence conversion. The patents included a synthetic aperture imaging system, a high-power pulse modulator for a medical linear accelerator, a lateral drift control method for unmanned helicopters and a blast energy absorbing honeycomb structure, to name a few. In addition, the military opened more of its current projects to civilian contractors. However, the contradiction between the state-owned and non-public sectors remains, as the former still mistrusts the latter and the latter wishes for more leverage in dealing with the former.16

However, despite the large state funding and support, China has not been at the forefront of innovations and this has been attributed by some to the role of the Chinese Communist Party in every aspect of MCF from industry to R&D and to academia which binds them and gives them little say in governance of these institutions. The freedom to pursue ideas wherever they may lead is a precondition for innovation but this is continually curtailed by greater role of party in their functioning.17

Logistics Support

This consists of two aspects. First is leveraging the socio-economic development to support logistic functions for the military. A trend which has been widely followed by various nations in quality of life, engineering support, infrastructure, housing, transportation, health services and provision of food for military personnel. This allows the military to focus on its core functions i.e. waging combat and reduce the ‘Teeth to Tail’ ratio. The second aspect is supporting and sustaining military operations in the field. The impetus for this was given as part of major PLA reforms carried out in 2016 by way of creation of CMC Logistic Support Department and a CMC Joint Logistics Support Force.18

Mobilisation

China relied on ‘People’s War’ as a war fighting strategy in its initial years and has continued to lay importance on its citizens to provide support to war fighting efforts as well as military to support during national disasters. Towards this end, the CMC National Defence Mobilisation was created as part of the PLA reforms in 2016. This was also to overcome the shortcomings observed in military-civil cooperation earlier. With the upgraded department being placed directly under CMC, it was planned to have better oversight over the provincial military districts and reserve forces.

In addition, there is an additional body under the State Council, i.e. the National Defence Mobilisation Committee which is an umbrella body for tasks like conscription, defence transport and civil air defence. While this looks good on paper, there have been difficulties in implementation particularly with respect to civilian firms providing manpower and national support during mobilisation as well as re-imbursement of cost incurred. Towards this end, the 1997 National Defence Law was revised in 2010.

The Chinese Defence Industry

While seven Chinese defence companies figure in the global top 20, a noteworthy statistic is that the revenues from defence portfolio for Chinese companies are lesser than the others hence showing a strong bias to civilian portfolio. The vast majority of the equipment and technologies purchased by the PLA are supplied by nine State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and one state-owned research institute.19 These organisations tend to be conglomerates that own multiple – often dozens – of subsidiaries. These small numbers of massive firms dominate each of the five major defence industry sectors: aerospace, electronics, land systems, nuclear, and shipbuilding.

The SOEs have a top-down approach and receive heavy direction from military and civilian leaders and are not as responsive to changes in technology as Western firms.

Sector Company Name Key Military Goods
Aerospace •  Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC)

•  Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC)

•  China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC)

Aircraft engines

Aircraft and avionics

Missiles and space system

Electronics •  China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) Military Sonar, Radar, Electronic Warfare systems, C4ISR systems (land, sea and air), information infrastructure
Land System •  China North Industries Group Corporation (NORINCO)

•  China South Industries Group Corporation (CSGC)

Armoured Vehicles, artillery, guided weapons, ammunition, air defence system, small arms

Armoured vehicles, small arms

Nuclear •  China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP)

•  China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC)

Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear power, Nuclear fuel

Shipbuilding •  China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC)

•  China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC)

Surface ships , submarines, naval weapons, naval electronics

Surface ships and technical support

Chinese Attempts to Stay Ahead in the Arms Technology Race

The Chinese have been frequently accused of and even punished for trying to close the military technology gap with the Western nations through both legal and illegal means.20 This is being done through multiple means and either by increased funding into Research and Development or committing outright intellectual-property theft and has been a cause of concern for not just the US, but recently these concerns have been aired by Russia. The former US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said at a conference, “The PRC is perpetrating the greatest intellectual property theft in human history. Every Chinese company has the potential to be an accomplice in Beijing’s state-sponsored campaign to steal technology. Nations that partner with Chinese firms, put the security of their networks at risk.”21 Yevgeny Livadny, Rostec’s Chief of Intellectual Property Projects, has said that “Unauthorised copying of our equipment abroad is a huge problem. There have been 500 such cases over the past 17 years. China alone has copied aircraft engines, Sukhoi planes, deck jets, air defence systems, portable air defence missiles and analogues of the Pantsir medium-range surface-to-air systems.”22

Chinese companies, in many cases with the backing of the Chinese government, use a variety of methods to acquire valuable technology, Intellectual Property (IP), and know-how from Western firms.23

    • Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
    • Venture Capital (VC) Investments
    • Joint Ventures (JVs)
    • Licensing Agreements
    • Cyber Espionage
    • Talent Acquisitions

The examples and reasons are not difficult to believe. While China is already the world’s second largest arms producer, the ability of its arms industry to domestically develop certain advanced weapon systems is questionable. As can be seen in the graphic, aircraft and engines remain a cause of concern.

As can be seen from the accompanying pictures, the Chinese versions of their ‘state-of-the art’ aircraft closely resemble those made elsewhere. Only the most ardent would believe that the Chinese had the same brainwave as others to develop these aircraft. The bigger cause of concern to the defence industry in the West and Russia has been that the Chinese are able to copy, produce and supply these to nations, especially the developing ones, at a much lower cost.

The inability to follow through on sophisticated systems like engines also leads us to believe that while it’s easier to obtain these designs through cyber espionage or by former employees obtaining and passing on the same to the Chinese and thereafter reverse engineering to manufacture the aircraft, the other technologies like precise metallurgy and design needs to keep pace. Rising states benefit from the “advantage of backwardness”. By free riding on the research and technology of the most advanced countries, less developed states can close the military-​technological gap with their rivals relatively easily and quickly and this is facilitated by globalisation, the emergence of dual-​use components and advances in communications including the opportunity for cyber espionage. This, however, largely ignores one of the most important changes to have occurred in the realm of weapons development i.e. the exponential increase in the complexity of military technology.

The increase in complexity has significantly raised the entry barriers for the production of advanced weapon systems. Countries must now possess an extremely advanced industrial, scientific, and technological base in weapons production before they can copy foreign military technology. As a result, the advantage of backwardness has shrunk significantly and know-​how and experience in the production of advanced weapon systems have become an important source of power for those who master these.24 It is for this reason that nations attempt to continually explore newer and unique technologies to gain a decisive edge against their adversaries. This aspect is covered in the Chinese context in another section of this paper.

The aspect of cyber espionage is another huge concern as it not only leads to theft of Intellectual property, but also exposes the weak cyber security which could lead to loss of data and worse, other highly classified military information. As US FBI Director Christopher Wray has noted, “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China.”25

There has been a fight back, particularly by the US to contain and reverse Chinese attempts to gain access to military technology. This is also part of the broader power struggle between the two nations. The US has in the recent past, imposed severe sanctions on Chinese companies having links with its military with President Trump issuing an executive order in November 2020, barring US investment in 31 companies that the Department of Defence designated as “Communist Chinese military companies.” The list included most of Chinese defence SOEs besides a few leading private players like Hikvision and Huawei.26 The US Department of Commerce has been considering designating further 89 Chinese companies as “military end users,” and imposing restrictions on them as well.27

Disruptive Technologies

The key to stay ahead in the arms race is to develop technologies not possessed by other nations. These could provide a dramatic edge in both peace and war. Some of the technologies being pursued by China are Artificial Intelligence, Quantum, Hypersonic and Directed Energy Weapons, unmanned systems and bio-medicine and engineering. In each of these, the Chinese R&D, academia and private companies are playing a vital role. During the 19th Party Congress held in October 2017, Xi Jinping highlighted the country’s ambition to transform itself into a “science and technology superpower”.28 He has also called for breakthroughs in AI and highlighted rapid, revolutionary advances taking place in AI and quantum science.29

The Stumbling Blocks

As is usually the case, personal ambitions may be the biggest impediment to further MCF. Xi Jinping wants to harness the innovative potential of domestic high-tech, but his assaults on private technology companies could prove the law of unintended consequences. In recent months, the CCP has cracked down hard on China’s private-sector tech companies. Last October, Jack Ma criticised the CCP for stifling innovation. In response, the communist regime fined his Alibaba e-commerce firm $2.8 billion for violating arbitrary anti-trust laws, while an Alibaba subsidiary, Ant Group, had its IPO squashed. Other private high-tech companies, including Tencent, Didi, and Pinduoduo, have similarly had their wings clipped.30 In a stark reversal of previous policies towards encouraging private sector, the message is clear – serve the Party with the aim of having “a thriving tech scene producing world-beating innovations under the thumb of the Communist Party.”31

DISCLAIMER: The Views expressed and suggestions made in the article are solely of the author in his personal capacity and do not have any official endorsement. Attributability of the contents lies purely with the author.

Endnotes

  1. Xi urges efforts to boost integrated military and civilian development, Xinhua, 21 June 2017
  2. SIPRI Yearbook 2021, https://sipri.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/sipri_yb21_summary_en_v2_0.pdf
  3. Civil-Military Integration and Chinese Military Modernization, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies Volume 3 – Number 9, December 2004, https://apcss.org/Publications/APSSS/Civil-MilitaryIntegration.pdf#:~:text=Civil-military%20integration%20%28CMI%29%20is%20the%20process%20of%20combining,U.S.%20Congressional%20Office%20of%20Technology%20Assessment%2C%20CMI%20includes%3A
  4. China Brief Special Issue: Military-Civil Fusion And Its Prospects For The PLA And Chinese Industry, Volume 19, Issue 18, 08 October 2019, https://jamestown.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Read-the-10-08-2019-CB-Issue-in-PDF2.pdf?x11483
  5. Full Text: China’s National Defense in the New Era, Xinhua | English.news.cn (xinhuanet.com)
  6. The Evolution of China’s Army and Military Strategy, Sergio Miracola, 27 September 2019, https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/evolution-chinas-army-and-military-strategy-24040
  7. China’s Military-Civil Fusion Strategy , Alex Stone and Peter Wood, China Aerospace Studies Institute, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Research/Other-Topics/CASI_China_Military_Civil_Fusion_Strategy.pdf?ver=Ad0daPKcZNbcEg2latiO0Q%3d%3d
  8. Ibid, p 21
  9. China’s Military-Civil Fusion Strategy , Alex Stone and Peter Wood, China Aerospace Studies Institute, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Research/Other-Topics/CASI_China_Military_Civil_Fusion_Strategy.pdf?ver=Ad0daPKcZNbcEg2latiO0Q%3d%3d
  10. Myths and Realities of China’s Military-Civil Fusion Strategy, Elsa B. Kania and LorandLaskai, CNAS, 28 January 2021, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/myths-and-realities-of-chinas-military-civil-fusion-strategy
  11. China names key areas of military-civilian integration, CGTN, Wang Lei, 21 June 2017, https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d41444d7751444e/share_p.html
  12. The People’s Liberation Army’s 37 Academic Institutions, China Aerospace Studies Institute, 11 June 2020
  13. US-China tech war: China taps 12 top universities to rival MIT and Stanford in science and technology research, Iris Deng, South China Morning Post, 27 May 2021, https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3135087/us-china-tech-war-china-taps-12-top-universities-rival-mit-and-stanford
  14. From China with funding: Country puts its faith in Indian start-ups, T E Narasimhan, Business Standard, 26 December 2019, https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/what-explains-chinese-investors-new-found-love-for-indian-startups-119122500703_1.html
  15. Chinese app ban to create funding hurdle for Indian unicorns and soonicorns, PeerzadaAbrar, Business Standard, 02 July 2020, https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/chinese-app-ban-to-create-funding-hurdle-for-indian-unicorns-and-soonicorns-120070101740_1.html
  16. Privatizing China’s Defense Industry, Zi Yang, The Diplomat, 07 June 2017
  17. Why China Can’t Innovate, Regina M Abrami, William C Kirby and F Warren McFarlan, Harvard Business Review, March 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-china-cant-innovate
  18. China Establishes Joint Logistic Support Force – China Military, http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/view/2016-09/13/content_7256651_5.htm
  19. How Developed Is China’s Arms Industry?, https://chinapower.csis.org/arms-companies/
  20. China steals US designs for new weapons, and it’s getting away with ‘the greatest intellectual property theft in human history’, Ellen Ioanes, Business Insider,25 September 2019, https://www.businessinsider.in/slideshows/miscellaneous/china-steals-us-designs-for-new-weapons-and-its-getting-away-with-the-greatest-intellectual-property-theft-in-human-history/slidelist/71285008.cms#slideid=71285009
  21. Esper Exhorts Allies To Ban Chinese 5G: Britain’s Huawei Dilemma, Sydney J FreedbergJr, Breaking Defense, 19 September 2019, https://breakingdefense.com/2019/09/esper-exhorts-allies-to-ban-chinese-5g/
  22. Now Russia Accuses China of Technology Theft, James M. Dorsey, The Globalist, 02 January 2020, https://www.theglobalist.com/russia-china-intellectual-property-theft-technology-arms-sales/
  23. How Chinese Companies Facilitate Technology Transfer from the United States, Sean O’Connor, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission staff Research Report, 06 May 2019, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/How%20Chinese%20Companies%20Facilitate%20Tech%20Transfer%20from%20the%20US.pdf
  24. Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority and the Limits of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber Espionage, Andrea and Mauro Gilli, International Security (2019) 43 (3): 141–189.
  25. The China Threat, https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/the-china-threat
  26. Executive Order 13959 of November 12, 2020 Addressing the Threat From Securities Investments That Finance Communist Chinese Military Companies, Federal Register Vol 85, No 222, 17 November 2020, https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/13959.pdf
  27. In latest China jab, U.S. drafts list of 89 firms with military ties, Karen Freifeld, Reuters, 23 November 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-china-military-companies/exclusive-in-latest-china-jab-us-drafts-list-of-89-firms-with-military-ties-idUSKBN28307Z
  28. “Xi Jinping’s Report at the Chinese Communist Party 19th National Congress”, Xinhua, 27 October 2017, http://www.china.com.cn/19da/2017-10/27/content_41805113_3.htm.
  29. “Xi Jinping’s Keynote Address at the APEC Business Leader’s Summit ” , Xinhua, 11 November 2017, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/zyxw/t1509676.shtml.
  30. Xi Jinping’s Crackdown on Private Tech Is Endangering Military Modernization, Richard A. Bitzinger, The Epoch Times, 10 August 2021, https://www.theepochtimes.com/xi-jinpings-crackdown-on-private-tech-is-endangering-military-modernization_3942179.html?welcomeuser=1
  31. China offers a masterclass in how to humble big tech, right?,Schumpeter, the Economist, 24 July 2021
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The views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of the Indian Defence Review.

About the Author

NP Singh

is a Serving Indian Army Officer.

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