China can learn from the United States when it comes to applying civilian innovations to the military, a Chinese geopolitical expert has said.
In an article last week, Gu Jianyi, a researcher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said China could consider developing a new industrial ecosystem inspired by successful US firms such as SpaceX, Palantir and Anduril. Such an ecosystem would be defined by Silicon Valley-style innovation, software-centric design, agile development and civil-military integration.
Gu, who is also an adviser to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Academy of Military Science, said some Chinese companies such as Huawei, DeepSeek and Tencent already had core technologies and would just need to be integrated into the defence industrial base.
“If the technological reserves and innovation potential of these enterprises in the civilian sector can be fully unleashed, and their technologies and products systematically channelled into weapons and equipment development and production, it will inject revolutionary momentum into China’s equipment development,” Gu said in the article published on the WeChat account of Qiyuan Defence Technology, a Chongqing-based drone producer and security equipment maker.
Military-civil fusion has been a strategic policy in China for some years but, according to Gu, some institutional barriers still need to be brought down to enable private and commercial enterprises to contribute to national defence.
