The PLA and Intelligentised Warfare

China is deploying advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, automation and robots, quantum computing, big data, 5G networking, and the Internet of Things (IoT), for military purposes. In its 14th Five Year Plan (FYP) (2021–25), China outlined the main aims and objectives of modernising the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), including that of ‘elevating the level to being an intelligent force’.1 China seeks to focus on accelerating military modernisation to make the PLA an automated and computerised force by 2027, the 100th anniversary of its founding in 1927. By 2035, PLA aims to become a modernised force in all spheres.2 Nevertheless, analysts note that a significant force reduction from current levels, budget boost and faster adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies will be necessary to hasten the development of an intelligent and informationised force.

Shift from Mechanised to Intelligentised and Informationised Domain

The PLA has been modernising for more than 20 years and has long been described as being “half-mechanized, half-informationized force”.3 The PLA is seeking to improve military efficacy by focusing on information technologies—particularly those connected to command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR), to become an “informatised” force.4 The move from mechanised to informationised force under the cover of intelligent network capabilities, such as IoT, 5G, Big Data and Cloud Computing, are the core ideas of the Chinese military’s thinking towards transitioning to a 21st century force.

In essence, intelligent warfare implies the use of 4IR technologies for military use and the exploitation of such technologies to produce ‘intelligent weapons’, like AI-enabled weapons system. China’s 2019 defense white paper had noted that ‘informationised conflict and intelligent warfare’ was ‘on the horizon’.5

China believes that the emerging economic and military-technical revolutions will be dominated by AI, big data, human–machine hybrid intelligence, swarm intelligence, automated decision-making, autonomous unmanned systems, and intelligent robots.6 The PLA is adopting 4IR technologies in order to be better prepared for the growing symmetric and asymmetric combat domains, especially in geographical and cyber space. Numerous crucial technologies, including robots, big data, quantum computing, etc., are expected to enable PLA forces to be better prepared, especially at a time when asymmetric warfare is changing the dimensions across battlespace.

In its geopolitical rivalry with the United States, China places a high importance on AI as a crucial technology. Chinese military experts predict that AI will be essential to overtaking the US military as the most powerful armed force in the world.7 As a result, China has developed a plan to take the lead in AI by 2030. Beijing’s ‘New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan’ was published in July 2017, with three key strategic objectives—to raise China’s AI industry to the level of the global state-of-the-art; to make significant advances in fundamental AI theory by 2025; and to make China the world leader in AI theory, technology, and applications by 2030.8

China is seeking to ‘infuse AI’ into almost every component of the PLA’s operations and equipment. The upgrading of the PLA to intelligent warfare is linked to China’s AI plan as well as other significant investments in important technical industries, particularly in the “national defense construction, security assessment, and control capabilities”.9

Intelligentised Warfare and Military–Civil Fusion

Chinese military modernisation is expected to become more and more associated with civil technological innovation. The majority of 4IR breakthroughs—particularly in the areas of AI, machine learning, big data, etc.,—are occurring in the commercial sector. Because of this reliance on commercial technology, Military Civil Fusion (MCF), also known as ‘civil–military integration’ (CMI), has become a more crucial military-technological innovation approach.10

MCF is essential to the PLA’s embrace of intelligentised combat, as seen by efforts to use AI to this end. The New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan is being seen as the “poster child” for MCF because it takes use of developments in commercial AI to accelerate the development of technology essential for future military modernisation.11

Already, 4IR technologies are being utilised to increase the capabilities of weapons systems like drones (both armed and unarmed).12 MCF has integrated military modernisation with civilian technical innovation in a number of crucial dual-use technology areas.13 MCF has “included deeper integration of military and civilian administration at all levels of government: in national defense mobilization, airspace management and civil air defense, reserve and militia forces, and border and coastal defense”.14

The PLA’s Strategic Support Force (SSF) was established in 2015 and is in charge of space, cyber influence operations and electronic warfare. It has “energetically built ties outside the military arena, signing cooperation agreements with research universities and other research centers for developing enhanced capabilities for integration of 4IR tools to its spherical domain”.15

The ongoing technological denial by the West and the lack of expertise in technological advancement across Chinese research industries, especially in semiconductors, though, are being flagged as some of the reasons that could cause impediments to the PLA’s modernisation plan.16 Therefore, even as China has made progress in its endeavour to harness commercial high technology for the PLA’s modernisation efforts and to be combat-ready in line with the needs of the 21st century, there are still obstacles that must be overcome before such 4IR technologies can be widely adopted by the PLA.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Manohar Parrrikar IDSA or of the Government of India.

• 1. Jon Grevatt, “China to Deepen ‘Civil-Military Fusion’ in 14th Five Year Plan”, Janes, 2 November 2020.
• 2. Edmund J. Burke, Kristen Gunness, Cortez A. Cooper III and Mark Cozad, “People’s Liberation Army Operational Concepts”, RAND Corporation.
• 3. Dean Cheng, “Chinese Party Sets Bold Military Goal: ‘Mechanized and Informationized’ by 2027”, Breaking Defense, 23 November 2020.
• 4. See Joe McReynolds and James Mulvenon, “The Role of Informatization in the People’s Liberation Army Under Hu Jintao”, in Roy Kamphausen, David Lai and Travis Tanner (eds), Assessing the People’s Liberation Army in the Hu Jintao Era, The United States Army War College, April 2014, pp. 208–10.
• 5. “China’s National Defence in the New Era”, The Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China, 24 July 2019.
• 6. Elsa Kania, “China’s Artificial Intelligence Revolution”, The Diplomat, 27 July 2017.
• 7. Elsa Kania, “China’s Rise in Artificial Intelligence and Future Military Capabilities”, Center for a New American Security, 2017.
• 8. Graham Webster, Rogier Creemers, Elsa Kania and Paul Triolo, “Full Translation: China’s ‘New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan’”, DigiChina, Stanford University, 1 August 2017.
• 9. Frank Slijper, Alice Beck and Daan Kayser, “State of AI: Artificial Intelligence, the Military and Increasingly Autonomous Weapons”, Pax for Peace, April 2019.
• 10. P.K. Mullick, “Military Civil Fusion in China”, Vivekananda International Foundation, 1 August 2022.
• 11. Ibid.
• 12. Sakshi Tiwari, “‘Bomber Buddy’: China Secretly Developing Loyal Wingman For Its Xian H-20, J-20 Stealth Fighters–Indian Media”, The Eurasian Times, 30 June 2022; Gabriel Honrada, “China Floats First-ever AI-powered Drone Mothership”, Asia Times, 1 June 2022.
• 13. Manoj Joshi, “China’s Military-Civil Fusion Strategy, the US Response, and Implications for India”, Occasional Paper No. 345, Observer Research Foundation, 25 January 2022.
• 14. Greg Levesque, “Military-Civil Fusion: Beijing’s ‘Guns and Butter’ Strategy to Become a Technological Superpower”, China Brief, Vol. 19, Issue 18, 8 October 2019.
• 15. “Civil-Military Fusion: The Missing Link between China’s Technological and Military Rise”, Council on Foreign Relations, 29 January 2018.
• 16. Edward Alden, “Washington Raises Stakes in War on Chinese Technology”, Foreign Policy, 11 October 2022.