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Resilience Media first published this short essay for me, here. — Last month I was in the room for Pete Hegseth’s keynote speech at SOF Week in Florida. He’s a gifted public speaker and, although I’m not a MAGA guy, I found myself enjoying his performance. More interesting than his
delivery was the content. He made no mention of Ukraine but referred multiple
times to the threat posed by ‘communist China’. That will be no surprise to
Americans. But Europeans worry less about China. Should we? Hegseth’s speech got
me thinking about how China went from being militarily irrelevant to a defence
tech superpower. From Buyer to Builder When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
came to power in 1949 China’s economy was overwhelmingly agrarian. It was among
the poorest countries in the
world, with a GDP per capita of $95. In the 1950s and 1960s it began
importing tanks, fighter jets and submarines from the USSR. During the 1970s
and 1980s, after its re-engagement with the West, it imported some non-lethal
technology from France and Israel. Even the US sold it a few transport
helicopters. That stopped in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square massacre. The West
imposed arms embargoes, and Russia became
its arms supplier. But post-Soviet instability
forced China to begin innovating domestically. By the early 2000s it had
increased its R&D budget and began improving domestic capabilities in
electronics, missiles and naval power. That coincided with the beginning
of globalisation and a period of sustained economic growth for China. It
channelled its new-found riches into the development of defence capabilities. Both of those trends accelerated after
Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. American consumers bought more Chinese-made
products, and the CCP spent that money developing more military capability. Civil-Military Fusion: The
Engine Behind Innovation Many nations manufacture their
own weapons and ammunition. But China suddenly became one of the foremost defence
technology innovators. How? The reason is doctrinal: the CCP has
pioneered a principle called civil-military
fusion. Everything, from AI research at Baidu to quantum
computing labs at Tsinghua, is potentially dual-use. The boundary between
civilian and military R&D is deliberately porous. Xi Jinping even created a
commission to ensure its correct implementation. That would feel very unusual in
the West, where we instinctively separate defence and civilian innovation. But
for China it’s a guiding principle. One which has transformed its entire tech
ecosystem into a military supply chain. The Air Domain After importing Russian fighter
jets for years, in the 1990s China acquired the right to manufacture Russian
Su-27s domestically. This enabled it to study modern aircraft design and paved
the way for the domestically developed Chendgu J-10. Still in service, the J-10 is a
modern fighter comparable to Western fighters like the F-16. Its first combat
use was last month when Pakistani J-10s reportedly shot down some French-made
Rafales used by India’s air force. China is now developing a 6th
generation fighter, dubbed J-36. It is optimised for long-range supersonic
flight and notable for its stealth features and tailless design, putting China
ahead of the US in the race to field the next generation of fighter jet. Both
J-36 and the American F-47 are larger aircraft with longer range and better
stealth capabilities than antecedents, hinting at a new type of air power
competition. The Maritime Domain In just 30 years, China has gone
from coastal defence force
to technologically advanced blue-water
navy. It is one of just five countries capable of domestically building
aircraft carriers, and its Type 055 destroyer is broadly regarded as the best
in its class. It has developed a number of
innovative platforms which are unique among militaries. One is a barge with a
bridge that can extend from the bow onto a beach. The barges can connect to
form giant causeways. That is useful if you want to get troops and vehicles
onto, say, a nearby island. It is also the first country to build
a drone ‘aircraft carrier’. Many navies have understood that drones will be a
feature of naval air power in the future, but China is the only country to have
built a ship dedicated to the technology. It has also developed
long-endurance underwater unmanned vehicles (UUVs), a large trimaran-design unmanned
surface vessel (USV), a deep-sea cable cutting device and the ‘underwater great
wall’ – a network of seabed sensors and sonar arrays across the South China Sea. The Space Domain What began as a state programme
focused on prestige space missions has evolved into a powerful dual-use
ecosystem. China now operates a full-spectrum space capability including launch
vehicles, its own satellite navigation system (BeiDou), Earth observation
satellites, anti-satellite weapons and a modular space station (Tiangong). China was the first country to
launch a quantum communication satellite (Micius) in 2016. It followed this up
in May 2025 with quantum-secured communications across a distance of 12,900km
between China and South Africa. It has developed a bullet-shape satellite designed for very low earth orbit (VLEO) - an initial step towards building a 300-satellite constellation for remote sensing and communications. It has tested hypersonic orbital glide vehicles
which blur the line between spacecraft and weapon system. These could pose a
novel challenge to existing missile defence systems and probably form part of
the rationale behind Trump’s Golden Dome project. Some Chinese satellites have
demonstrated the ability to autonomously dock, capture, and manipulate other
satellites, such as the Shijian-21. These are dual-use technologies which are useful
for debris removal but also anti-satellite (ASAT) strategies. An American problem? Pete Hegseth is right to be
concerned. Civil-military fusion has transformed the economics of Chinese defence
tech and Western consumers have filled the coffers of the CCP. Does any of this matter to
Europe? For many on the continent, it doesn’t. At least not directly. Where the
US sees China as its primary adversary, Europe sees Russia. Will that change? Probably not in
the short term – Russia will be an existential threat until Europe has properly
re-armed. That is simply a matter of geography. In the longer-term Europe will
not want China to replace the US as the world’s policeman. For the moment, that
is a problem it has chosen to ignore.
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