China's Efforts in Civil-Military Integration, Its Impact on the Development of China's Acquisition System, and Implications for the United States

Abstract

China, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, is significantly stepping up its efforts to pursue civil-military integration or what he calls military-civil fusion (MCF) as an integral component of its grand development strategy of building a technologically advanced and militarily powerful state within the next one to two decades. This paper examines the making, nature, and implementation of Xi's grand MCF undertaking. This paper offers an analytical framework that seeks to provide a coherent and holistic view of the many moving parts and disparate elements of MCF through an innovation systems perspective. This framework identifies seven categories of factors that are important in shaping the structure and process of the MCF system: catalytic, input, institutional, organizational, networks, contextual, and output factors. Key dynamics that are examined in detail in the paper include the high-level leadership engagement, the influence of the external threat and technology environments, the application of new financial mechanisms such as hybrid state-private sector investment funds, the role of key state and military agencies, and the evolution of the Chinese defense acquisition system to embrace MCF.