China’s AI-Driven Civil-Military Fusion – A Significant Advantage, but Not the End of the War
MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned aircraft system from Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 35 conducts ground turns aboard the littoral combat ship USS Fort Worth in the South China Sea, May 1, 2015. U.S. Navy/Conor Minto, photo courtesy of National Defense University Press.
China is rapidly advancing its goal of becoming a “world-class military” by investing heavily in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, swarming systems, unmanned platforms, and missile technology.
Many of these developments are autonomous or “intelligentized,” building on China’s existing expertise in unmanned systems. Development of autonomous weapons is expected to accelerate under the AI Plus initiative, which links civilian AI advancements directly to military applications. Beijing has reorganized the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) around this strategy, using Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) to integrate the PLA with state-owned defense conglomerates and civilian technology companies.
State-owned enterprises and major research institutions remain dominant in AI-related procurement. Eleven of the fifteen top suppliers are either state-owned or affiliated with the defense sector, including CETC, CASC, NORINCO, the “Seven Sons of National Defense,” and affiliates of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The AI Plus initiative seeks to embed AI across China’s economy and society, making it a foundational element of both civilian and military development.
Introduced in a 2024 government work report and incorporated into the Central Committee’s recommendations for the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030), AI Plus has become a primary driver of PLA modernization. Chinese universities have established hundreds of MCF platforms and national defense laboratories to meet PLA needs in deep learning, machine vision, robotics, and other advanced fields.
The AI Plus framework incorporates military requirements into research and development across six areas: science and technology, industrial development, consumption, public welfare, governance capacity, and global cooperation. This approach produces “born dual-use” technologies designed to serve both civilian and military purposes from inception. Increasingly, civilian companies and universities are contributing to China’s AI-powered military capabilities. For example, Alibaba’s Zhenwu chip and Baidu’s Kunlun P800 bolster both commercial AI applications and military intelligence processing. State-owned Norinco recently unveiled the P60 military vehicle, capable of autonomous combat-support operations powered by DeepSeek.
Researchers at Xi’an Technological University report that their DeepSeek system can analyze 10,000 battlefield scenarios in just 48 seconds—a process that would take human planners about two days.
Under President Xi Jinping’s “strategic endurance” directive, AI Plus and the expanded fusion framework are creating a system where civilian innovation automatically strengthens military power. The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) is expected to formalize this doctrine, signaling that national security, rather than pure economic growth, is now the organizing principle of Chinese economic planning.
Beijing aims for sustainable four to five percent GDP growth while concentrating state resources in high-tech sectors such as semiconductors, AI, aerospace, and energy, all critical to building a dominant military. To support this shift, China is creating a two-tier planned economy: high-tech sectors receive maximum state support for long-term resilience, while other sectors are maintained at stable levels to prevent economic stagnation and social unrest. China’s rare earth export controls illustrate how resource policy supports its Military-Civil Fusion strategy. In October 2025, restrictions on materials used in U.S. aircraft, missiles, radar, and AI semiconductors highlighted Beijing’s ability to leverage its dominance in mining and processing for strategic advantage.
China’s approach resembles the Soviet Union’s historical effort to mobilize society for military competition with the United States, but with key differences. Rather than relying on an inefficient command economy, AI Plus fosters a “total war economy” that maintains competitive innovation through market mechanisms while ensuring military applications. Where the Soviet military-industrial complex often produced technological dead-ends, China’s system allows advances in facial recognition, autonomous vehicles, and language processing to simultaneously benefit e-commerce and electronic warfare.
By integrating civilian and military innovation, Beijing addresses the challenge that defeated the USSR: sustaining prolonged military competition without undermining economic efficiency and innovation. Xi Jinping is betting that China can outpace the United States by rapidly building military capabilities while maintaining just enough growth to prevent economic collapse.
However, authoritarian systems like China’s often lack the flexibility, creativity, and adaptability needed for cultivating the next generation of military leaders and innovative weapons design. AI and autonomous technologies introduce a new paradigm where creative problem-solving and risk-taking may outweigh traditional military experience.
As a counterstrategy, the United States and its partners could disrupt PLA AI systems by injecting false indicators into open-source intelligence or planting misleading data in cyber environments, potentially skewing machine-learning assessments.
To maintain its technological edge over the Chinese Communist Party, the United States must evaluate China’s entire technology ecosystem—not just its defense companies—because civilian AI, quantum research, and commercial chip development are tightly integrated with military modernization.
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