China is 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 strengths in unmanned systems. Development of autonomous weapons is expected to accelerate under China’s AI Plus initiative, which links civilian AI progress directly to military applications. Beijing has reorganized the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) around this approach, using Military-Civil Fusion to integrate the PLA, state-owned defense conglomerates, and civilian technology companies.
State-owned enterprises and major research institutions continue to dominate AI-related procurement, with eleven of the fifteen top suppliers either state-owned or affiliated with the defense sector, including CETC, CASC, NORINCO, the Seven Sons of National Defense, and Chinese Academy of Sciences affiliates. The AI Plus initiative aims to promote the deep integration of AI across China’s economy and society.
Introduced in a 2024 government work report and written into the Central Committee’s recommendations for the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030), it elevates AI Plus into a primary driver of Military-Civil Fusion and PLA modernization.
Chinese universities have established hundreds of MCF platforms and national defense laboratories to support PLA requirements in deep learning, machine vision, robotics, and other advanced fields.
The AI Plus framework embeds military requirements into research and development across six areas: science and technology, industrial development, consumption improvement, public welfare, governance capacity, and global cooperation.
This produces “born dual-use” technologies designed from the outset to serve both civilian and military functions. A growing share of China’s AI-related military capabilities comes from civilian companies and universities.
Alibaba’s Zhenwu chip and Baidu’s Kunlun P800 simultaneously strengthen commercial AI and military intelligence processing. State-owned Norinco has unveiled the P60 military vehicle, capable of autonomous combat-support operations powered by DeepSeek.
Researchers at Xi’an Technological University report that their DeepSeek-powered system can analyze 10,000 battlefield scenarios in 48 seconds, reducing a process that would take human planners roughly two days.
Under Xi Jinping’s “strategic endurance” directive, AI Plus and the expanded fusion framework are creating a system in which civilian innovation automatically feeds into military power.
This doctrine, expected to be detailed in the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030), signals that national security, not growth, is now the organizing principle of economic planning.
Beijing is aiming for survivable four to five percent GDP growth while concentrating state resources in high-tech sectors such as semiconductors, AI, aerospace, and energy, all of which are essential to building the world’s dominant military.
To support this shift, Beijing is constructing a two-tier planned economy: high-tech sectors are mobilized for long-term resilience, while the remaining “ballast” sectors are kept stable enough to prevent stagnation and unemployment.
Tier one includes AI, semiconductors, aerospace, and military technology and receives maximum state resources.
Tier two encompasses all other sectors, which must remain merely stable to avoid unrest. China’s rare earth export controls show how resource policy supports its fusion strategy.
The October 2025 restrictions on elements used in U.S. aircraft, missiles, radar, and AI semiconductors demonstrate how Beijing uses its dominance in mining and processing to influence global defense capabilities.
With control over most of the world’s rare earth supply chain, China can employ economic leverage as part of its long-term military strategy, using civilian supply chains to advance Military-Civil Fusion.
China’s new strategic system mirrors the Soviet Union’s attempt to harness the power of the entire society for military competition with the United States.
However, the Chinese paradigm differs in that it can endure where the USSR could not. Instead of relying on an inefficient command economy, China’s AI Plus system creates a “total war economy” that maintains competitive innovation through market mechanisms while ensuring military applications.
Where the Soviet military-industrial complex produced technological dead-ends, and modern Russia struggles to develop new technology while maintaining a war economy, China’s approach ensures that breakthroughs in facial recognition, autonomous vehicles, or language processing simultaneously advance both e-commerce and electronic warfare.
Beijing has addressed the fundamental challenge that defeated the USSR: how to mobilize an entire economy for prolonged military competition without destroying the innovation and efficiency needed to sustain it. Xi Jinping is betting that China can outlast the United States by building military power faster while maintaining just enough growth to prevent economic collapse.
Authoritarian systems like China’s do not cultivate flexibility, creativity, innovation, or adaptability, attributes that are necessary to build effective military leaders and to design the next generation of weapons.
With AI and autonomous weapons, the world is moving into a brand-new realm where rote memorization of previous battles, wars, and performances will be of little help compared to a creative mind and the willingness to take risks on new designs or tests that may fail, but from which researchers and military leaders are free to learn and improve on the next attempt.
As a counter strategy, if the US and its partners inject false indicators into open-source intelligence or plant fictitious or misleading data in cyber environments, they can corrupt PLA machine-learning models and push them toward incorrect assessments and recommendations.
In order to maintain its edge against the CCP, the United States must evaluate China’s entire technology ecosystem, not just its defense companies, because China’s integrated model ensures that civilian AI, quantum research, and commercial chip development directly accelerate military modernization.
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