The myths and realities of China’s Military-Civil Fusion program

Kaiser Kuo

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This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Elsa Kania, a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard University's Department of Government and adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security who researches China's military strategy, defense innovation, and emerging technologies. Elsa joins the show to talk about China’s push for “Military-Civil Fusion,” debunking some of the myths about the program that U.S. pundits and policymakers have imbibed.

Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with The China Project. Subscribe to Access from The China Project to get, well, access. Access to not only our great newsletter, the daily Dispatch, but to all of the original writing on our website at thechinaproject.com. We’ve got reported stories, essays and editorials, great explainers and trackers, regular columns, and, of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China’s fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples in China’s Xinjiang region to Beijing’s ambitious plans to shift the Chinese economy onto a post-carbon footing. It’s a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor.

I’m Kaiser Kuo, coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Military-Civil Fusion, or 军民融合 (jūnmín rónghé), is a phrase that’s been around for decades, but has only really gained broader attention in the last six or seven years. MCF, as it’s commonly abbreviated, arrived in American discourse on China policy on the heels of a lot of concern and commission over made in China 2025. You remember that industrial policy that was announced in 2015? Well, that gave a lot of ammunition to those people who were arguing for broader and stricter export controls of advanced technologies; efforts to keep them out of Chinese hands. After all, they said, the Chinese are explicitly calling for the civilian sector to be harnessed to the PLA.

So, suddenly, the scope of what counted as problematic dual-use technology was greatly widened. Voices who were calling for a small yard-high fence approach were, it seemed at the time anyway, drowned out by a chorus of increasingly disinhibited cries for freezing China’s technological advance. Revelations of China’s widespread use of advanced surveillance technologies in Xinjiang, added, of course, to this after 2018. All this culminated in the restrictions announced in October of last year in the Biden administration’s apparently successful efforts to corral the Dutch, the Japanese, the South Koreans, and others in enforcing bans on equipment that’s necessary to manufacture advanced semiconductors. Today on Sinica, we are going to talk all about Military-Civil Fusion and how perceptions of that policy among key analysts really informed American responses.

Joining me to discuss this topic is Elsa Kania, a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard University’s Department of Government. Her research focuses on China’s military strategy, defense innovation, emerging technologies, and a bunch of other stuff. Elsa is also an adjunct senior fellow with the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security CNAS. In early 2021, Elsa and co-author, Lorand Laskai, published an excellent policy brief titled “Myths and Realities of China’s Military Civil Fusion Strategy” for CNAS. In that brief, they lay out exactly what Military-Civil Fusion is, and perhaps more importantly, what it isn’t. By my own lights anyway, it is a model of clear-eyed but level-headed thinking. I hope that our policymakers will all read if they haven’t already read that brief. Elsa joins us from Honolulu, Hawaii. Elsa Kania, welcome at last to Sinica.

Elsa Kania: Thank you so much, Kaiser. I’m happy to be joining the show.

Kaiser: Elsa, as anything that purports to tackle myths and replace them with realities, your policy brief kind of posits a conventional wisdom version of Military-Civil Fusion that U.S. pundits and policymakers have taken aboard or imbibed. You break that down into four main myths. Could you lay those out succinctly, and then we’ll look at each of them and see why it is that you label them myths and what in fact we should more correctly understand. Let’s start with this first myth, which is the idea that Military-Civil Fusion kind of originates with Xi Jinping. You devote a section of the paper to the history of the concept, which goes back in fact much earlier. Could you give us a quick version of that history?

Elsa: I think, as is often the case, we sometimes give Xi too much credit for initiatives that predate him. To be sure, as with most myths, there is a degree of reality insofar as this strategy and agenda has become much more prominent under his leadership, and he’s really elevated its importance and the emphasis in resourcing. But there is a degree of continuity going back to the time of Deng Xiaoping or even back to Mao Zedong with concepts of military-civil unity and the importance of the people supporting the military. There is a degree of consistency in the emphasis on leveraging commercial resources to advance national defense, whether that’s weapons development or mobilization. When we look at the range of efforts over time, predating, but continuing and intensifying under Xi’s leadership, to some extent, the elevation of this agenda to a national strategy could be regarded as a sign that prior efforts were delivering the anticipated results.

Kaiser: Yeah.

Elsa: When Xi takes charge of an initiative personally, there are reasons perhaps to believe there was seen to be a need for that added emphasis and the added momentum that comes with his personal priorities. We’ve definitely recognized that Military-Civil Fusion, while newly important and newly relevant in many respects, has a range of precursor programs. The theme consistently has been how to ensure that civilian industry and commercial enterprises across academia, across the startup ecosystem are aligned with national defense objectives, and that the PLA also can leverage new and more innovative companies as opposed to only or primarily engaging with traditional state-owned defense enterprises that are not known to be quite so innovative.

Kaiser: Your key point isn’t so much that, hey, you get the history correct to understand the timeline. I mean, that doesn’t really matter so much. What’s really important is that we should think about the fact that MCF needed to be so elevated under Xi is indicative of maybe that it hadn’t been so successful previously. You do talk about what barriers have frustrated the attempts of earlier leaders to get private enterprises, and especially Chinese high-tech companies, to cooperate with the mostly state-owned companies that comprise China’s defense industry. What are those barriers? What has stopped them from succeeding prior to Xi?

Elsa: There are some common challenges in any military bureaucracy when it comes to having flexible approaches to procurement and acquisitions and building sustainable partnerships with commercial enterprises. The U.S. military has encountered these challenges over time and initiatives like the Defense Innovation Unit that has sought to build bridges with Silicon Valley and have a mechanism for prototyping is one response to that. And so, too, in the PLA, we’ve seen the Agile Innovation Defense Unit, AIDU, which appears to be inspired by DIU, and is taking a similar approach. Initially established in Shenzhen, it had a team of younger, more tech-savvy personnel who are trying to work with Chinese startups on projects with a rapid response, whether that is COVID-related capabilities to enhance pandemic response or drone swarming and autonomy. We’ve seen these barriers over time, to some extent, inherent in bureaucracy, and the PLA’s effort to overcome them, including against the backdrop of some of these military reforms.

Some of the issues as well come to questions of policies and legal frameworks that have been uneven or inconsistent, including in the context of protections on intellectual property. I think, despite decades of talk about civil-military integration, Military-Civil Fusion was seen as necessary to have that sort of deeper partnership beyond some of the efforts at the margins and pilot projects or programs or efforts that were more symbolic relative to how you reshape the whole ecosystem. I think that is what is ambitious and far-reaching about military civil effusion as a concept, taking a systemic approach, and trying to really reshape how China approaches military innovation and defense technology development by really placing commercial enterprises more at the heart of that endeavor.

Kaiser: That makes sense. The second myth, the idea that Military-Civil Fusion has conferred on China some kind of an insurmountable advantage or a gigantic advantage — let’s talk about the reality there. We’ve already talked a little bit about how Xi’s very need to revive this program or this policy initiative says that it was in need of reviving; that it hadn’t been so successful. And we’ve talked about some of the reasons why it’s been so hard to actually implement. Since we’re talking about national advantage, that is an inherently comparative idea, right? I mean, don’t we also do it? Don’t we actually do it better? Isn’t China’s effort, in large part, inspired by and done in conscious imitation of America’s success in civil-military fusion? Programs like DARPA and DIU or In-Q-Tel, which is the CIA’s in-house VC?

Elsa: I agree that there are efforts of Military-Civil Fusion that are clearly emulating or inspired by some of the strengths of the U.S. defense innovation ecosystem. Yet, at the same time, I believe we should avoid complacency when it comes to American perceived advantages. We’ve seen over time the debate evolve from believing the U.S. is relatively unchallenged in its military-technical superiority to anxiety that China is inherently advantaged or on track to surpass us on all fronts. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle in the sense that there are great strengths in the U.S. system, but there also are ways in which certain initiatives have perhaps not been as far-reaching or impactful as we’d need to really achieve effects at scale and implementing, and some of the difficulties in reforming procurement and acquisitions, again, a shared challenge, to some extent, for the U.S. and Chinese militaries really speaks to the fact that in a world where the focus of innovation is shifting from militaries or governments to increasingly commercial enterprises that are more agile or creative on some fronts, the capacity to build and leverage partnerships is really critical.

We have seen the PLA look to U.S. efforts. Certainly, DARPA gets a lot of attention. Any DARPA program is closely scrutinized in the Chinese military enterprise as they are concerned about its success and also looking for inspiration. At the same time, we’ve seen quite direct invitations of recent initiatives like the Defense Innovation Unit, which would create a capacity to prototype and allow for more flexible partnerships with companies to circumvent some of the more cumbersome dimensions of the current acquisition systems.

Kaiser: What’s the Chinese version called?

Elsa: Oh, the Agile Innovation Defense Unit, in fact. So, quite a similar nomenclature there and a similar emphasis when it comes to having a small team. This effort was initially established in Shenzhen, clearly a center of innovation, especially on drones. They’ve had short-term projects focused on faster reaction when it comes to delivering national defense scientific and technological capabilities, including in the context of COVID response or swarming and autonomy. There definitely are aspects where we see these parallels or these attempts at emulation. But where I think there is the potential for Military-Civil Fusion to deliver a long-term advantage is in the systemic character and far-reaching dimensions of Military-Civil Fusion, where this is not just a so-called national strategy where we have the top-level design as it’s described, and the emphasis from Xi Jinping at the central level.

We’ve seen efforts to expand and implement Military-Civil Fusion across every province and down to the local level with not just the Central Military Civil Fusion Development Commission, but an apparatus that has commissions and organizations dedicated to its perpetuation down to the very local level. Although there may be certain inefficiencies or unwieldiness in attempting to make a thousand flowers bloom, so to speak, in Military-Civil Fusion, this does bring a scope and scale to these efforts that could be consequential, especially when we’re thinking, for instance, about the potential for national defense mobilization and the system we saw initially illustrated during…

Kaiser: COVID, yeah.

Elsa: COVID response and the concern about what would China’s capacity to mobilize for a potential invasion of Taiwan or another worst-case scenario look like when there is this system and structure to direct resources from commercial purposes to military production.

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Kaiser: What I like so much about this is that it tries to right size this problem. You do talk about the potential, and you certainly do warn us away from complacency. At the same time, though, we’ve seen this happen before where some initiative that’s spelled out in China as a “we want to do this,” is read in America as, “we’ve already done this.” I mean, I think of things like the social credit system where we somehow imagine that this fully formed system whereby individuals are all assigned some kind of singular score based on their loyalty and their behavior and their online activities. And, of course, that’s nonsense. I worry that some of the same dynamics are here at work with our understanding of Military-Civil Fusion.

I think your paper does a really good job of taking out some of the hype. At the same time, like I said, you’re very clear-eyed about this and you don’t dismiss the challenges. Maybe you could enumerate what some of the areas are where we’ve seen success already or we’re very close to seeing breakthroughs resulting from Military-Civil Fusion. I mean, you’ve named some of them, just in passing, like drone swarming technology and things like that. But what are some of the areas? I know that in your testimony for the U.S.-China Economic Security and Review Commission, you gave a more full-fledged list, but maybe give us some idea of where some of these areas of pressing concern are.

Elsa: Military-Civil Fusion has especially concentrated on new domains and emerging technologies, and explicitly delineated priorities like space, cyberspace, maritime technologies, robotics, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence among others. The idea animating these priorities is that in these new frontiers, so to speak, China has a chance to be a first mover and to achieve an advantage through dedicating investments and achieving new advancements, perhaps beyond what is currently understood to be possible. Whereas the U.S. military has an advantage accrued in certain more traditional capabilities, when it comes to emerging capabilities, the playing field is leveler and there is a chance for China, not to be a fast follower trying to close the gap, but to really become a leader and pioneer in these domains, or to leverage investments looking to long-term potential. Space is a great example of where we’ve seen a growing number of Chinese commercial companies getting into the game and everything from efforts to expand constellations in low earth orbit.

Kaiser: Like Starlink. Yeah.

Elsa: Yes, a response to Starlink, and clearly the PLA is both envious of Starlink and seeking to develop capabilities to disrupt or subvert it, seeing efforts to develop more of a national network and expanded capabilities in LEO and also a number of companies advertising capabilities like AI-enabled satellites or satellite communications that could support hypersonics. So, space is certainly a domain where I think we’ll continue to see a lot of dynamism and progression. Arguably, Military-Civil Fusion relates to one of the most consequential crises in the U.S.-China relations of late. The infamous balloon incident where stratospheric airship capabilities were developed by a certain scientist, Wu Zhe, of Eagles Men that has since become rather infamous, and potentially, this is a great example of some of the downsides of this very systemic whole of nation expansive approach to Military-Civil Fusion where there are some benefits, but also risks where you have scientists who are very entrepreneurial and looking to work with the PLA and advertising capabilities where there may not be full oversight or visibility at the central level.

Kaiser: Or they’re not quite ready for prime time.

Elsa: Or not quite ready for prime time, indeed. But that’s perhaps a crisis we would not have seen if Military-Civil Fusion had not become such a central feature and the accompanying incentives.

Kaiser: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Let’s get back to the list of the myths because we’d gone through two of them now. The third myth, though, is a really interesting one, which is that China has imposed, in your words here, a legal obligation on Chinese companies to participate in MCF. We heard this constantly, and I think we still hear it in various forms, so let me just ask — isn’t there evidence of that? I mean, isn’t there this amendment to the party constitution that was made in the 19th Party Congress in what, 2017? Aren’t there things like the national security law and the cybersecurity law and the national intelligence law? These things are often quoted by advocates of restrictions on technology exports, or even of outbound investment restrictions, which is something that they’re talking about right now, or in banning Chinese technologies or technology companies in the United States, everything from Huawei to TikTok. Aren’t there things on the books that would compel companies to cooperate?

Elsa: Clearly there are laws that are relevant and require that companies support national security, and clearly the party state has capacity, if necessary, to compel companies to share sensitive technologies. We’ve seen the increased intrusion of the CCP into technology companies in the past couple of years. Clearly the potential is there, but what is striking is the fact that there is no law specifically on Military-Civil Fusion at this point. There is no legal framework or clear series of policies around forced technology transfer per se. Despite the fact that laws about Military-Civil Fusion development or promotion were previously introduced as early as 2012, and were recently in 2018, these initiatives didn’t quite make it to be introduced based perhaps on some of the legal complexities that come into play.

But when we look at how Military-Civil Fusion, as a whole, is playing out today, beyond this narrative of the party notionally compelling companies at gunpoint to play, what we see much more is a series of incentives and benefits and efforts to make the PLA more of an attractive partner to Chinese companies. Whether it’s some of the challenges and competitions organized through different services of the PLA or elements of the Central Military Commission, again, trying to imitate DARPA; and competitions focused on unmanned systems across multiple domains or applications of artificial intelligence, we see a lot of efforts to make Military-Civil Fusion a lucrative endeavor for the PLA, and again, as we were discussing, that can perhaps come with some unintended consequences when companies like Eagles Men get in the game and are sort of being very entrepreneurial and multiple companies have incentives to market themselves and brand themselves as Military-Civil Fusion supporting enterprises.

Kaiser: In the conversation in the States here, it seems to be not about incentives and inducements that the Party’s offering or the PLA is offering, but rather about the coercive elements, the sticks rather than the carrots. How should we be understanding this?

Elsa: I think the sticks are sizable, if need be, but compelling transfer of technologies isn’t really a regularized or sustainable mechanism so far as we’ve seen. When we turn our focus to incentives, that does allow for more precise mapping of some of the policies and looking more closely at some of the companies that have been very actively engaging with the PLA as opposed to more generalized suspicion that any Chinese technology company is at risk. Certainly, I agree that the risk or potential is there, and I don’t think the Party would hesitate to co-opt or access technologies if that were necessary. But in terms of the more routine functioning of this ecosystem, I do think the incentives and policies and building of partnerships over time is more consequential.

Kaiser: Interesting. Interesting. The fourth myth, and it really relates to this, and I think we’ve kind of touched on this already, but I’m going to read it as you’ve written it, you and Lorand, “Nearly every Chinese enterprise is already actively involved in Military-Civil Fusion. As a result, it is all but inevitable that any collaboration between American and Chinese researchers is likely to end up directly or indirectly supporting military modernization.” This one seems to be a very important one that has implications for things beyond this recent legislation in Congress right now, where they do not want to renew this decades-old provision to collaborate in scientific research between China and the United States, right? And the argument that’s being floated from the hawkish side is that it’ll all immediately go to the PLA. Anything that we do in collaboration with Chinese scientists immediately benefits the Chinese military.

Elsa: I think the question is, ultimately, how do we balance the risks and benefits? And the risks are very real. Clearly, especially for dual use technologies, including domains like deep-sea research where there’s definitely a nexus to national defense interests or artificial intelligence, there is the potential for the PLA to benefit, but in reality, although I’m sure the PLA would love if every single Chinese company were at its store and were actively collaborating. What was striking is that, at least initially, Chinese technology companies that were globally present or had global ambitions were less visibly or openly working with the PLA perhaps because of concern about foreign markets. Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei have seen some glancing indications, and I don’t doubt that they’ve supported the Chinese military on some fronts, but they were not openly declaring their fealty to this.

They weren’t seemingly as actively engaged as some of these smaller startups, and defense enterprises were. I think there might have been a window of opportunity when we could have exploited divergences of incentives where some Chinese companies that did have a desire to remain in global markets and sustained global partnerships could have been incentivized to be more transparent in order to retain that access, but that ship has sailed to some extent at this point, unfortunately. But when there is this generalized concern that any Chinese company could be working with the PLA, well, there is a degree of truth in that. That does perhaps give the PLA some advantage when it comes to bringing new stakeholders into the fold. We’ve seen different estimates over time of just how many Chinese companies actually have the required licenses to work with the PLA and are actively participating in that ecosystem of several thousand, and about 2% as of 2019, based on one estimate I saw.

And the data is incomplete. Anecdotally, we definitely see indications that the number of companies supporting national defense in some way, shape, or form has grown over time. But I think it is not perhaps as extensive or comprehensive as the PLA would wish or as American policymakers would fear. That doesn’t mean that the risk or potential isn’t there, but it does mean we can build out the data set and try to understand which companies present the most risks relative to those that are not actively or currently integrated into this overall system when we are trying to differentiate and be more targeted in some of our policy responses.

Kaiser: It strikes me just now that what’s true for these companies, I think of companies like Qihoo 360, not a company I particularly respect, but it delisted so that it could go back, and now it’s quite integrated into… It is actually sort of one of the poster children for MCF now, right? It works on cybersecurity issues for the PLA.

Elsa: Absolutely.

Kaiser: But I think what’s true for companies is also true for individual researchers and scientists where when we create a sort of an environment here that’s hostile to them, or we don’t open up doors of opportunity for them to pursue careers and lives in the United States, what are we doing, but driving them into the arms of the Chinese, where, as we’ve said, their research could be turned to benefit the Chinese military, right?

Elsa: Yes.

Kaiser: It just feels like an own goal.

Elsa: The irony is that many of the talent plans that have provoked a lot of anxiety were an attempt to reverse the brain drain that the CCP was concerned was occurring when many top students and scientists wanted to come to the United States and stay. A lot of the range of talent plans trying to recruit scientists back were attempting to reverse that balance more in Beijing’s favor. And when we’ve responded sometimes with more restrictions or punitive approaches against the backdrop of greater hostility to immigration, I think we are undermining some of our own advantages and contributing to PRC national objectives when it comes to retaining that talent, recruiting it back into China’s national ecosystem.

Kaiser: Yeah. Couldn’t agree with you more. Chinese policymakers, though, are well aware of the way that policies like this are landing on American ears, right? They know how we’ve really worked ourselves up into a frenzy over things like Made in China 2025, and now over this policy of Military-Civil Fusion. We’ve seen them, though, in the case of Made in China 2025, mute discussion of that, and actually just significantly reduced mentions of it in any official pronouncements in media reports or anything like that. Presumably, because they understood that it really rankled in Washington. At the time, I guess Liu He was still trying to get the phase one trade deal signed. Has there been any similar awareness of or muting of MCF in China?

Elsa: Yes and no. To be sure, Chinese policymakers are keenly aware of the reaction Military-Civil Fusion has produced and its growing infamy. As a result, we have seen less explicit discussion of it in official policies. For instance, the 14th-five-year plan didn’t emphasize Military-Civil Fusion directly, but did talk about military civil scientific collaboration and sharing of resources. So, discussed many of the features of military civil fusion without using the exact phrase.

Kaiser: Clever.

Elsa: Yes, we’ll never know. Clearly, it’s a very sophisticated obfuscation there, but I think it’s clear that this military fusion isn’t going anywhere.

Kaiser: To be fair, we’ve done the same thing with the China Initiative, right?

Elsa: Yeah. I mean, we’ve seen restrictions on access to information and a closing down of accessibility of data generally on many fronts. But at the same time, one of the analytic advantages of studying Military-Civil Fusion comes from the reality that for this strategy to be successful, it requires information being available as well. And the PLA’s capacity to build partnerships with academia and companies requires making some information accessible and sharing and advertising some of the different initiatives in play. I think Military-Civil Fusion can’t be wholly hidden, but at the same time, we have seen it’s certainly less; less than the prime time than it was sort of circa 2015, ’17, ’18.

We’ve seen fewer public mentions. We’ve also seen some discussion of military-civil unity, 团结 (Tuánjié), as a sort of unity as opposed to fusion as an animating concept. But I think that is a related but distinctive concept, and one that also comes into play, for instance, everything from the need for Military-Civil Fusion for the total war on COVID or thinking about the military-civil unity concept, actually dating back to some of Mao’s pronouncements during the Chinese Civil War as China faces a more hostile international environment and risks of conflict against the backdrop of current competition. I think we can expect to see Military-Civil Fusion remain publicly discussed, where necessary, but it’s certainly something that Chinese policymakers are cognizant of the sensitivities associated with.

Kaiser: You published that paper in January 2021, it was just before the Biden administration took office. You’ve had some time now to see how this concept of Military-Civil Fusion has figured into this administration’s thinking, into the Biden administration’s thinking about China, about technology. Has it diminished at all, or has it taken on maybe even more urgency in light of the major technological advances that we’ve seen just in recent years, especially in AI and areas like quantum computing, rail guns, and hypersonics, things like that? What are your thoughts? Does MCF have the same place of prominence in the Biden administration’s thinking that it did in the Trump administration’s?

Elsa: There has been continuity and change. Some of the policy directions that started during the Trump administration have continued. There have been efforts to make some of these measures more targeted and to continue refining the instruments we’re using, including, hopefully, to avoid collateral damage to American innovation capability and to ensure that the policies are sustainable and defensible. I hope that our report has been of some utility in advancing the debate on Military-Civil Fusion and refining public understanding. I think it is inherently challenging to make some of these export controls and technology restrictions as targeted as would be the platonic ideal. But we have seen progress, and I think it’s going to continue to be challenging to strike that balance and walk that line when it comes to recognizing the risks and the real ways in which Chinese campaigns of industrial espionage targeting dual-use technologies remain an urgent threat.

Academic research collaborations and commercial partnerships can be exploited to that end, relative to trying to retain the openness and where feasible collaboration that is so critical to global scientific progress and something that the U.S. has benefited from disproportionately in our history.

Kaiser: Yeah, absolutely. You were good enough to send me your congressional testimony, your testimony to the USCC. I must say that reading that, it was given, just for context, in April of this year in 2023, it’s very different in tone, and I dare say it’s quite different in substance, too, from what you’d written just two years earlier. Most notably, you don’t go after myths, you don’t go after areas where the American elite’s understanding of MCF is maybe in error. What has changed in your thinking? Was it this venue or the additional research that you’d done in the intervening couple of years, or had MCF in China really made substantial gains that are reflected maybe in the fact that you’re much less interested now in myth-busting or deflating hype? What’s changed?

Elsa: My thinking on Military-Civil Fusion hasn’t changed that much in actuality, I’d say on some level. I think the reports in question had different objectives. For the initial report on myths and realities, we were concerned about trying to inform the general public conversation at a time when discussion of Military-Civil Fusion was reaching a fever pitch. And I continued to be concerned about misperceptions or misrepresentations. But in the testimony, I was really trying to concentrate on looking at some of the challenges and some of the advancements we’ve seen in the years since Military-Civil Fusion was elevated under Xi and this new era of Military-Civil Fusion, so to speak, when a lot of these new policies and initiatives have been playing out over time.

I continue to believe that it is inherently challenging to come up with a definitive answer to the question of how well exactly is Military-Civil Fusion working. Because we’re looking at a massive ecosystem and successes and failures can be juxtaposed and aren’t mutually exclusive. There can be inefficiencies tolerated in the interest of effectiveness. There can be ways in which Military-Civil Fusion is not quite as successful as American policymakers may fear. Nonetheless, given the expanse of what is being undertaken, even smaller successes in a couple of domains or technologies could have significant ramifications. We have seen the continued expansion and deepening of these efforts. I think many of the observations we made in 2021 are still very valid that Military-Civil Fusion encompasses a smaller proportion of the overall Chinese technology ecosystem.

I think we do need to focus on the companies and technologies where it is being most actively implemented as we’re trying to direct resources and manage the risks. But that doesn’t mean that we won’t see troubling or consequential developments or some of these self-proclaimed champions of Military-Civil Fusion are accelerating their efforts. We’ve seen unmanned systems or drones, the consequence of which the PLA is clearly observed from the war in Ukraine is definitely an area where the number of Chinese companies developing drones, whether that’s UVs, USVs, UAVs, or UGVs really cross every domain and supporting every service of the PLA that I think speaks to some of the impact and importance of China’s efforts to develop a smart ocean system and apparatus for maritime domain awareness, the development of deep-sea technologies and capabilities.

Definitely I try to remain open in my research to my thinking evolving over time. But I think there’s also a degree to which all of this can be true. Military civil fusion can be overhyped, but can also be highly concerning. There can be some of these aspects of the system that don’t live up to the platonic ideal that Xi Jinping may espouse, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be important capabilities emerging or the potential in the long term for a mobilization that could be impactful or shift the balance in a conflict scenario as well.

Kaiser: I, for one, take great comfort in knowing that one of this country’s leading authorities on Military-Civil Fusion in China, you, exhibit such epistemic modesty about it and flexibility in your thinking and an instinct to try to right size this and to try to take the hype out, but also not to downplay the very real problems. And so hats off to you. It was an excellent, excellent report, and I encourage everyone to read your congressional testimony as well. Elsa, thanks so much for taking the time.

I just want to leave a couple of parting thoughts of my own, and then let’s move on to recommendations. I was just thinking about how our official language now, following the Europeans, is going from decoupling to de-risking, and maybe you could give me your ideas about this as well.

Maybe I’m too optimistic in thinking so, but I hope that implicit in this is that we’re going to be more targeted in the technologies or the industries that we want to cordon off from China. Maybe that will mean a less expansive, less maximalist view of Military-Civil Fusion. That’s one idea. And the other that maybe is more of a worry is that the United States has, in recent years, exhibited this tendency to try to compete with China by “out-Chinaing” China, by doing what they do. I think immediately of all sorts of manifestations of industrial policy, which used to be kind of at least officially regarded as anathema by the United States. But now, we’ve kind of fully embraced industrial policy. Are we going to mirror China on this as well? Are we going to see a more kind of robust and aggressive effort to make our technology companies play ball with the Pentagon? I kind of worry about that. What do you think?

Elsa: I share your concerns that there is a degree to which American policymakers can espouse a degree of envy or desire to emulate what they see as features of China’s system, even if their understanding of these policies may not be wholly consistent with the reality of how these initiatives are being implemented, to frame it as diplomatically as I can there. I think we don’t want to try to out-China China. There are aspects of whether we call it industrial strategy or supporting science and technology development from more of a long-term perspective where there is an American tradition of having more robust government investment in research and development and providing resourcing for basic research and facilitating partnerships between the military and innovative commercial enterprises.

I mean, there’s a reason why the PLA talks about American Military-Civil Fusion and envies aspects of our system and its historical successes as well. Definitely, I share a general concern that we have to recognize what are the unique strengths of our own system and not be reacting out of anxiety or concerns that China has the systemic superiority that Xi Jinping has sometimes claimed their system possesses. I think, in the long term, trying to walk that line and recognize some of the challenges or contradictions here where it is accurate to say that the U.S. and China are intensely competing in artificial intelligence, or biotechnology at the same time.

It is accurate to say that American and Chinese researchers have extensively collaborated in these fields in ways that have advanced the disciplines and really been critical to progress and success in both countries. Whether it’s the debates around the science and technology agreement and whether there are ways to sustain that scientific and research collaboration with greater oversight and greater risk mitigation, or thinking about the long-term trajectory of the U.S.-China relations, I think there are reasons for concern, but also, hopefully, we can rise to this challenge, so to speak, by implementing policies and pursuing directions that we should be regardless of what China is doing as opposed to being reactive in our responses.

Kaiser: Amen. Amen. Elsa, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. It has been such a pleasure. Let’s move on now to recommendations. First, a very quick reminder that the Sinica Podcast is part of The China Project, and if you like the work that we’re doing with Sinica and the other shows in the network, then the best thing that you can do to help us is to subscribe to Access from The China Project. You get access to this show on Mondays, East Coast Time in the U.S., and of course, to our daily Dispatch newsletter. Also, no paywall on the many great stories that we run on the website. So, pitch in, help us out. And become a member. All right. Onto recommendations. Looking forward to hearing what you’ve got.

Elsa: I read a lot of science fiction, especially of late, and I do find the escapism important and necessary sometimes, and I also find it a fascinating way to get different perspectives on the world we live in. I found Ann Leckie’s new novel Translation State to be a really wonderful and fascinating reading, including in terms of how she approaches some really core questions about what it means to be human, about identity, about who is a person, and how power plays out when that is defined and arbitrated. There are many ways in which science fiction can be a mirror for the world we live in and including international relations and the contention, and how sure some of these questions of identity and humanity, and misunderstanding among cultures play out in different scenarios. I definitely would recommend the book and I’ll spare you a more detailed exposition of reading recommendations. But anything Ann Leckie has written, including her ancillary Justice series. Recently I was reading and rereading more of Octavia Butler’s work. There’s certainly no shortage of great books out there, and I always just wish I had more time to read.

Kaiser: Fantastic. Yeah, that sounds great. Thank you so much for that recommendation. I really like that you still, in your busy life, find time to read for leisure. I am insistent on doing that. I’ll really deliberately carve out time to read just for pleasure. When I do that, I often like to enjoy a cup of 玄米茶 Genmaicha in Japanese, 糯米茶 (nuòmǐ chá) in Chinese — green tea with roasted sticky rice. Just amazing stuff. I love the flavor of that like you wouldn’t believe. I realized that I had all this nice green tea people had given me over the years, and I wanted to figure out how I could roast glutinous rice for that. What seems to work right now so far is soaking a cup of Numi, which you can buy in any Asian supermarket, soak it for a few hours, maybe four or five hours, and then drain it and then toast it over medium heat on like a big flat pan. Tossing it frequently until it takes on a… You got to use a spatula. At first, it’s still wet, but once it’s dried, you kind of break it up and toss it. It takes on a kind of nutty, toasty… Oh, it’s insane. You almost got to burn it. The flavor then will suddenly pop. Once you’ve got it at that level where it’s almost burnt, just a teaspoon of it and a cup of green tea. And my God, it’s great.

Elsa: That sounds tasty.

Kaiser: Yeah. If any of you out there have a better way to do this, because I looked online, I didn’t really find much. If anyone has a better way to do this, let me know. I’d love to hear how to get the more intense roast flavor like you get in the commercial Genmaicha. Anyway, Elsa, thank you, once again, for taking the time. It’s been such a pleasure to speak with you.

Elsa: Thank you, and likewise.

Kaiser: The Sinica Podcast is powered by The China Project and is a proud part of the Sinica Network. Our show is produced and edited by me, Kaiser Kuo. We would be delighted if you would drop us an email at sinica@thechinaproject.com, with or without Genmaicha preparation recipes, just give us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, if you would rather do that, as this really does help people discover the show. Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter or on Facebook at @thechinaproj, and be sure to check out all of the shows in the Sinica Network. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week. Take care.