China’s Future Technology Drive

In 2016, PRC President Xi Jinping laid out his “five-year plan” for the country, which included an initiative known as “civil-military fusion”. This process involves creating cutting-edge technologies in the civilian sector for use by China’s military. Before Xi was appointed, China had not sought to improve its military since before Nixon’s visit, but under Xi, China’s military has been effectively modernised, with the PRC now having the second-largest military expenditure, behind the US.

This is mainly due to Xi’s goals for China in the Twenty-First century, including the highly ambitious  and expensive “Belt-and Road Initiative”. Being an authoritarian state, the CCP has a great deal of control over China’s civilian sector, and it may seem that this authority would make the civil-military fusion process rather efficient. However, if capitalism has proven anything, it is that innovation thrives in a free market. By attempting to control the innovations of its private sector, the CCP is far more likely to stifle it.

Making the Chinese civil sector more military

This new attempt to militarise China’s technological sector is evocative of the new military landscape that has emerged in recent years; conflicts between nations are now rarely fought on a battlefield, and the internet and social media has revolutionised the way the international community is organised. One would assume that the United States would have an advantage in blending the technological and military spheres of their society, defined as they are by their free market.

The freedom that the American technology sector has, includes the ability to refuse government contracts, a freedom not afforded to their Chinese counterparts. if the PLA gives a contract to a private company, they have no choice but to accept. Also, the political climate in the US has made many private-sector firms less enthusiastic to do business with the sitting administration, and less companies in the US are vying for government contracts.

These facts, coupled with sluggish and uncreative policy in the area of civil-military fusion by the Trump administration, give a rather bleak outlook for the US’s competitiveness with China in the area of military technology.

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