industrial policies and the country’s massive tech transfer apparatus in an effort to close these gaps. China also sustains high levels of R&D funding and offers significant subsidies to domestic companies working on frontier technologies.
Artificial Intelligence. China is a global leader in AI technology and aims to overtake the West in AI R&D by 2025 to become the world leader in AI by 2030. China has designated AI as one of its priority, national-level S&T development areas and assesses that advances in AI and autonomy are central to intelligentized warfare, the PRC’s concept of future warfare. Beijing views the integration of military and civilian institutions as central for developing AI-enabled military capabilities and has established military-civilian R&D centers and procured commercially-developed AI and robotic technologies to ensure PLA access to cutting-edge AI technologies. Although, Chinese researchers are world leaders in certain AI applications, such as facial recognition and natural language processing, and Chinese companies are marketing domestically-designed AI chips. While China remains reliant on certain foreign capabilities to produce AI hardware, such as advanced semiconductor fabrication factories and electronic design automation software, Chinese researchers continue to explore new materials and design concepts for next-generation semiconductors.
Brain Science. In 2021, Beijing funded the China Brain Plan, a major research project aimed at using brain science to develop new biotechnology and AI applications. That year, China also designed and fabricated a quantum computer capable of outperforming a classical high-performance computer for a specific problem. China was also domestically developing specialized refrigerators needed for quantum computing research in an effort to end reliance on international components. In 2017, China spent over a billion dollars on a national quantum lab which will become the world’s largest quantum research facility when completed.
FOREIGN ARMS ACQUISITION
China uses foreign suppliers to overcome limitations in its domestic production capabilities, particularly with helicopters and aircraft engines. Only a few states have been willing to supply military materiel to China, such as Russia and Ukraine. As its aerospace industry improves over the next decade, China very likely will decrease its foreign acquisitions to a point of only maintaining an import relationship with foreign suppliers positioned to quickly fill niche gaps in the PRC’s inventory.
- Helicopters. In 2019, China signed four contracts with Russia worth a total of $1.7 billion for 100 Mi-171 helicopters. Russia began producing helicopters for these contracts in 2020 and Beijing expects at least one of the orders to be completed in 2022. As of 2021, China sought at least 36 Russian Ka-52K ship-borne heavy attack helicopters to operate from Type 075 amphibious assault ships while it develops a domestic alternative.
- Aircraft Engines. China has a longstanding reliance on Russian- and Ukrainian-built engines for fixed and rotary wing aircraft produced domestically. China is developing new engine
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OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China
