Features | Security | East Asia

The Staged Death of China’s Military-Civil Fusion

Military-civil fusion became a major irritant in China-U.S. relations, so Beijing stopped talking about it. But it didn’t stop pursuing the strategy.

On March 13, 2026, China issued the outline for its 15th Five-Year Plan — a core document defining Chinese government policies into the next decade. In the hierarchy of Chinese sources, Five-Year Plan outlines rank among the most “authoritative” in that they are issued by the government, directly reflecting its will and aspirations. This places them in a special class that includes white papers, work reports, and, perhaps above all, the words of Xi Jinping. Among analysts of Chinese affairs, authoritative sources are generally regarded as the most valuable documents for deciphering Beijing’s intentions.  

A careful review of the outline for the 15th Five Year Plan yields a startling discovery: the document makes no direct mention of China’s policy of “military-civil fusion” (MCF, 军民融合). 

For years, MCF has been a major irritant in China-U.S. relations, given that it requires China-based companies, research organizations, and individuals – including those with substantial U.S. ties – to engage in activities that support China’s military development. This is the second consecutive Five-Year Plan outline with little or no reference to MCF, suggesting that Beijing has abandoned this controversial policy. If true, this could reflect an effort by China to dial down tensions with the United States – a rare good news story in an age of growing antagonism and rivalry. 

Unfortunately, as with other contentious policies in the past, the case of MCF shows that China has responded to criticism with concealment, not change.  

The Rejuvenation of MCF 

MCF is not a novel policy born in Xi Jinping’s “new era.” As others have shown, in one form or another, the desire to augment national power by streamlining cooperation between civilian and military entities has been a declared Chinese government objective going back decades. Xi’s contribution was to raise it to a national strategy. This seems to have occurred in 2015. On March 12 of that year, during China’s annual parliamentary sessions, Xi Jinping called for China to “deeply implement the MCF development strategy and strive to open up new prospects for strengthening and revitalizing the military.” He reiterated this message later that year, in a speech delivered at the Central Military Commission Reform Work Meeting.

China’s prioritization of MCF was reflected in the 2015 National Defense White Paper (China’s Military Strategy), which contained a subsection entitled “deep development of MCF.” The white paper called for China’s armed forces to “deeply advance MCF-style development, continuously improve fusion mechanisms, enrich fusion approaches, expand the scope of fusion, and elevate the level of fusion, striving to establish a framework of deep MCF characterized by comprehensive elements, multiple domains, and high efficiency.” While MCF language had appeared in past national defense white papers, it had never received so much emphasis.

China’s embrace of MCF informed the drafting of the 13th Five Year Plan outline, which was issued in March 2016, covering the years 2016-2021. The section on military affairs contains a subsection dedicated to MCF. It echoed Xi’s language about “implementing the MCF development strategy” and listed several steps that China should, and ultimately would, take to advance the MCF agenda. It also highlighted three domains – maritime, space, and cyber – for China to prioritize with “a set of major projects and initiatives.” China’s provinces followed suit by including significant MCF content in their respective 13th Five Year Plan outlines. 

The elevation of MCF spawned a range of policy documents designed to flesh out the “strategy.” These included, for instance, the “Opinions on Promoting Deep Development of MCF in the National Defense Science and Technology Industry,” issued in November 2017. MCF also figured heavily in a large set of “spin-off” Five Year Plans, including the “Special 13th Five Year Plan for the Development of MCF in Science and Technology,” issued in April 2017, and the “Special 13th Five Year Plan for Marine Science and Technology Innovation” (May 2017).

To help achieve its goals, the party-state built organizations to oversee the implementation of the MCF strategy across the country. In 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established a Central MCF Development Commission, with Xi Jinping as its first director. This was followed by the creation of MCF commissions in all the provinces. These organizations in turn created “offices” to carry out their directives. 

Suddenly MCF was everywhere, so much so that it caught the attention of U.S. policymakers during the first Trump administration. It put a name to the growing problem of China’s appropriation of U.S. knowledge and innovation in ways that benefited the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). MCF became a prime target for U.S. countermeasures. 

U.S. leaders cited MCF in their public speeches, often highlighting the compulsory nature of the strategy. For instance, then-Vice President Mike Pence referenced MCF in an October 2019 speech on China-U.S. relations. He stated,

And Beijing has also smashed the barriers between civilian and military technological domains – a doctrine that China calls “military-civilian fusion.” By law and presidential fiat, companies in China – whether private, state-owned, or foreign – must share their technologies with the Chinese military.

And Beijing has also smashed the barriers between civilian and military technological domains – a doctrine that China calls “military-civilian fusion.” By law and presidential fiat, companies in China – whether private, state-owned, or foreign – must share their technologies with the Chinese military.

The U.S. State Department championed efforts to expose the threats posed by MCF. In his January 13, 2020 speech on “Silicon Valley and National Security,” then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, 

Under Xi Jinping, the CCP has prioritized something called “military-civil fusion.” Many of you will know this. It’s a technical term but a very simple idea.  Under Chinese law, Chinese companies and researchers must – I repeat, must – under penalty of law, share technology with the Chinese military. The goal is to ensure that the People’s Liberation Army has military dominance.  

Under Xi Jinping, the CCP has prioritized something called “military-civil fusion.” Many of you will know this. It’s a technical term but a very simple idea.  Under Chinese law, Chinese companies and researchers must – I repeat, must – under penalty of law, share technology with the Chinese military.

The goal is to ensure that the People’s Liberation Army has military dominance.  

These expressed concerns led to policies designed to limit MCF’s most damaging effects. In May 2020, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation suspending entry of students/experts from China who, inter alia, were connected to any entities participating in China’s MCF strategy. In November 2020, the Trump administration issued an executive order curtailing investment in China-based companies that support the PLA, citing China’s MCF strategy as a factor. 

The U.S. reaction to MCF was loud and persistent, and it threatened to impose real costs on Chinese companies, research organizations, and individuals. By the end of the first Trump term, however, the concept had stopped appearing in authoritative party-state documents. Xi Jinping no longer cited MCF in his public speeches, including in settings where he used the term before, such as CCP Party Congress work reports. The year 2019 seems to have been the last time he mentioned MCF in public.

The outline for the 14th Five Year Plan, issued in March 2021, contained no mention of the term. MCF content likewise went missing from provincial Five Year Plans. While Shandong province’s 13th Five Year Plan outline, for instance, had an entire section on MCF, the term only appears once in the 14th Five Year Plan outline – in the name of a “demonstration zone” in Qingdao city.

MCF disappeared from other state documents. The annual government work report delivered at the parliamentary sessions in March each year, which had consistently contained MCF content going back to 2014, now said nothing. The 2019 work report was the last one in which the term appeared. 

China’s 2019 national defense white paper – the most recent iteration of this once-biannual document – makes only passing reference to the “strategic requirements” of MCF in a section on the PLA Strategic Support Force, and the official English version of the paper mistranslates the term to “aligning civil and military endeavors.” 

And now, with the March release of the 15th Five Year Plan outline, without a single reference to MCF, it might be reasonably concluded that China has abandoned its MCF strategy. 

MCF Retreats to the Shadows

Yet there was still one authoritative document that continued to hold high the MCF banner, and this was the most authoritative of them all: the CCP Charter. As Erik Quam pointed out, MCF remained in the Charter even after its 2022 revision, at a time when the party-state had otherwise ceased using the term. Specifically, the Charter cited the MCF Development Strategy as one of seven strategies that the CCP was pledged to implement.

Even more revealing, China’s party-state did not dismantle the organizations it had created to implement its MCF strategy. The Central MCF Development Commission survived the purge of MCF content from the 14th Five Year Plan, with references to its “office” as recently as 2022. Moreover, the provincial level counterpart MCF development commissions, established in 2017, are alive and well. Shandong province, for example, has an MCF Development Commission, with an office carrying out the day-to-day work on its behalf. As of last year, it remained operational. The same goes for the MCF office in Hainan province. The Fujian government website still includes the office of the province’s MCF Development Commission in its list of party and government organizations.

With a little probing, one readily finds evidence of the cover-up. Guangdong’s 14th Five Year Plan outline (January 2021), a document that contains no substantial reference to MCF, revealed in an appendix that the province intended to issue a “14th Five Year Plan for the Deep Development of MCF.” This suggests that not only have other provinces drafted their own MCF development plans, but there almost certainly exists a national plan by the same name. None of these has ever been publicly released. 

Clumsy efforts by China-based companies and organizations to hide their association with MCF are easily picked apart. In 2016, the climax of MCF mania, the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, together with the PLA Navy Submarine Academy, created the “Joint Laboratory for Maritime MCF.” The laboratory, led by Rear Admiral Da Lianglong, a renowned PLA Navy scientist, has focused on developing technologies to address China’s longstanding weakness in undersea warfare. For instance, its members have fitted underwater gliders with acoustic sensors, transforming them into tools for anti-submarine warfare. 

After the MCF term became toxic, the lab simply changed its name. Now operating as the innocuous sounding Joint Laboratory for Applied Marine Science and Technology, it continues to leverage civilian personnel and resources for projects that strike at the heart of U.S. military deterrence in the Western Pacific.

While China’s scientific research organizations no longer publicize their MCF bona fides, they clearly continue to support the strategy. One vivid example of this is found in the Chinese Academy of Science Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering, located in Hainan Province. The organization, which Xi visited in April 2018, operates manned and unmanned submersibles, from the South China Sea to the Arctic Ocean to the coast of Chile. To discretely facilitate the secure transfer of knowledge, expertise, and information to the PLA, and perhaps conduct operations on its behalf, the institute employs a staff member named Xing Luru, who is responsible for “work related to military-civil fusion and protecting classified information.” 

In sum, instead of abandoning MCF, as suggested by the country’s most authoritative documents, the Chinese party-state merely brought the whole initiative into the shadows. The cost of transparency had simply grown too high.

To some, the tale of MCF is hardly worth telling. Of course, the Chinese party-state lies and conceals! However, this story offers valuable lessons for China watchers, who, often captive to the belief that their cultural and language fluency gives them special access to the “truth,” tend to forget this point.

While potentially useful, “authoritative” documents have limited utility in understanding China’s intentions. As the case of MCF shows, the party-state has no scruples about excising sensitive content that risks harming China’s image or provoking a negative policy response from foreign states. That MCF – a “national strategy” personally championed by Xi Jinping – could be removed wholesale from public documents suggests that nothing is too sacred. This fact should cast doubt on the empirical value of almost every authoritative party-state document, especially in the sensitive realm of national defense/security, because one simply cannot know what content has been omitted. 

The case of MCF further illustrates the old dictum that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” This rule is not applied widely enough in the contemporary China studies field. One looks in vain in authoritative government documents for any clues that China would build, almost overnight, an immensely powerful navy. Yes, in April 2018 Xi exhorted the PLA Navy to transform itself into a “world-class navy,” but the timeline for achieving this goal was set at “mid-century,” and no authoritative source has ever defined what “world-class” even means. Meanwhile, China has built “world-class” warships at a breathtaking rate and is deploying them in ever more sophisticated operations around Taiwan, in the Indian Ocean, and beyond. 

The disappearance of MCF also strongly suggests that it is unwise to compare one iteration of a state document to another, a mistake that I myself have made in the past, and others continue to make today. To illustrate the perils, the 13th Five Year Plan outline contained a section on “safeguarding China’s maritime rights and interests,” which generally refers to efforts by Beijing to defend its maritime claims in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. However, that section was absent from the 14th Five Year Plan outline, only to return in the 15th Five Year Plan outline. This, of course, does not mean that from 2021-25 China became a good neighbor. Far from it: in fact, during this period China’s aggression against the Philippines reached unprecedented levels.

Concerns about missing content are especially pronounced in authoritative documents that, by their very nature, are distillations intended for public release, such as Xinhua News Agency summaries of leader speeches. As a case in point, in July 2013, Xi offered remarks at a Politburo meeting on the CCP’s strategy for transforming China into a “maritime power” (海洋强国). Xinhua did not publish the full speech, but it did issue a summary. That summary is considered a key document for anyone seeking to understand China’s approach to the sea. Yet, despite its “authority,” it is not a reliable source. 

Thanks to a mistake by staff members at Xiamen University, a full text of Xi’s speech was mistakenly placed online, revealing precisely what CCP propaganda organs chose to remove in the distillation process. Relying on the summary alone, one might conclude that there was no naval dimension to China’s maritime power strategy. However, in his speech, Xi actually called for China to “accelerate the pace of naval modernization” (加快海军现代化建设步伐). Had foreign observers seen that part, they would have had a firmer basis for predicting, to at least some degree, the massive expansion of the PLA Navy since 2012.

In sum, the problem of selective omission in Chinese state and party documents is a huge, perhaps insuperable, challenge to heavy reliance on “authoritative” sources to gauge Beijing’s intentions. Indeed, this probably explains why those who have done so, including many influential scholars in think tanks and academia, have consistently underestimated China’s military ambitions. Fortunately, there is hope for the rest of us: the fact that MCF references can still be found in the universe of Chinese sources – despite Beijing’s best efforts to conceal them – shows that the truth is still out there for those who can find the missing words. 

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On March 13, 2026, China issued the outline for its 15th Five-Year Plan — a core document defining Chinese government policies into the next decade. In the hierarchy of Chinese sources, Five-Year Plan outlines rank among the most “authoritative” in that they are issued by the government, directly reflecting its will and aspirations. This places them in a special class that includes white papers, work reports, and, perhaps above all, the words of Xi Jinping. Among analysts of Chinese affairs, authoritative sources are generally regarded as the most valuable documents for deciphering Beijing’s intentions.  

A careful review of the outline for the 15th Five Year Plan yields a startling discovery: the document makes no direct mention of China’s policy of “military-civil fusion” (MCF, 军民融合). 

For years, MCF has been a major irritant in China-U.S. relations, given that it requires China-based companies, research organizations, and individuals – including those with substantial U.S. ties – to engage in activities that support China’s military development. This is the second consecutive Five-Year Plan outline with little or no reference to MCF, suggesting that Beijing has abandoned this controversial policy. If true, this could reflect an effort by China to dial down tensions with the United States – a rare good news story in an age of growing antagonism and rivalry. 

Unfortunately, as with other contentious policies in the past, the case of MCF shows that China has responded to criticism with concealment, not change.  

The Rejuvenation of MCF 

MCF is not a novel policy born in Xi Jinping’s “new era.” As others have shown, in one form or another, the desire to augment national power by streamlining cooperation between civilian and military entities has been a declared Chinese government objective going back decades. Xi’s contribution was to raise it to a national strategy. This seems to have occurred in 2015. On March 12 of that year, during China’s annual parliamentary sessions, Xi Jinping called for China to “deeply implement the MCF development strategy and strive to open up new prospects for strengthening and revitalizing the military.” He reiterated this message later that year, in a speech delivered at the Central Military Commission Reform Work Meeting.

China’s prioritization of MCF was reflected in the 2015 National Defense White Paper (China’s Military Strategy), which contained a subsection entitled “deep development of MCF.” The white paper called for China’s armed forces to “deeply advance MCF-style development, continuously improve fusion mechanisms, enrich fusion approaches, expand the scope of fusion, and elevate the level of fusion, striving to establish a framework of deep MCF characterized by comprehensive elements, multiple domains, and high efficiency.” While MCF language had appeared in past national defense white papers, it had never received so much emphasis.

China’s embrace of MCF informed the drafting of the 13th Five Year Plan outline, which was issued in March 2016, covering the years 2016-2021. The section on military affairs contains a subsection dedicated to MCF. It echoed Xi’s language about “implementing the MCF development strategy” and listed several steps that China should, and ultimately would, take to advance the MCF agenda. It also highlighted three domains – maritime, space, and cyber – for China to prioritize with “a set of major projects and initiatives.” China’s provinces followed suit by including significant MCF content in their respective 13th Five Year Plan outlines. 

The elevation of MCF spawned a range of policy documents designed to flesh out the “strategy.” These included, for instance, the “Opinions on Promoting Deep Development of MCF in the National Defense Science and Technology Industry,” issued in November 2017. MCF also figured heavily in a large set of “spin-off” Five Year Plans, including the “Special 13th Five Year Plan for the Development of MCF in Science and Technology,” issued in April 2017, and the “Special 13th Five Year Plan for Marine Science and Technology Innovation” (May 2017).

To help achieve its goals, the party-state built organizations to oversee the implementation of the MCF strategy across the country. In 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established a Central MCF Development Commission, with Xi Jinping as its first director. This was followed by the creation of MCF commissions in all the provinces. These organizations in turn created “offices” to carry out their directives. 

Suddenly MCF was everywhere, so much so that it caught the attention of U.S. policymakers during the first Trump administration. It put a name to the growing problem of China’s appropriation of U.S. knowledge and innovation in ways that benefited the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). MCF became a prime target for U.S. countermeasures. 

U.S. leaders cited MCF in their public speeches, often highlighting the compulsory nature of the strategy. For instance, then-Vice President Mike Pence referenced MCF in an October 2019 speech on China-U.S. relations. He stated,

And Beijing has also smashed the barriers between civilian and military technological domains – a doctrine that China calls “military-civilian fusion.” By law and presidential fiat, companies in China – whether private, state-owned, or foreign – must share their technologies with the Chinese military.

And Beijing has also smashed the barriers between civilian and military technological domains – a doctrine that China calls “military-civilian fusion.” By law and presidential fiat, companies in China – whether private, state-owned, or foreign – must share their technologies with the Chinese military.

The U.S. State Department championed efforts to expose the threats posed by MCF. In his January 13, 2020 speech on “Silicon Valley and National Security,” then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, 

Under Xi Jinping, the CCP has prioritized something called “military-civil fusion.” Many of you will know this. It’s a technical term but a very simple idea.  Under Chinese law, Chinese companies and researchers must – I repeat, must – under penalty of law, share technology with the Chinese military. The goal is to ensure that the People’s Liberation Army has military dominance.  

Under Xi Jinping, the CCP has prioritized something called “military-civil fusion.” Many of you will know this. It’s a technical term but a very simple idea.  Under Chinese law, Chinese companies and researchers must – I repeat, must – under penalty of law, share technology with the Chinese military.

The goal is to ensure that the People’s Liberation Army has military dominance.  

These expressed concerns led to policies designed to limit MCF’s most damaging effects. In May 2020, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation suspending entry of students/experts from China who, inter alia, were connected to any entities participating in China’s MCF strategy. In November 2020, the Trump administration issued an executive order curtailing investment in China-based companies that support the PLA, citing China’s MCF strategy as a factor. 

The U.S. reaction to MCF was loud and persistent, and it threatened to impose real costs on Chinese companies, research organizations, and individuals. By the end of the first Trump term, however, the concept had stopped appearing in authoritative party-state documents. Xi Jinping no longer cited MCF in his public speeches, including in settings where he used the term before, such as CCP Party Congress work reports. The year 2019 seems to have been the last time he mentioned MCF in public.

The outline for the 14th Five Year Plan, issued in March 2021, contained no mention of the term. MCF content likewise went missing from provincial Five Year Plans. While Shandong province’s 13th Five Year Plan outline, for instance, had an entire section on MCF, the term only appears once in the 14th Five Year Plan outline – in the name of a “demonstration zone” in Qingdao city.

MCF disappeared from other state documents. The annual government work report delivered at the parliamentary sessions in March each year, which had consistently contained MCF content going back to 2014, now said nothing. The 2019 work report was the last one in which the term appeared. 

China’s 2019 national defense white paper – the most recent iteration of this once-biannual document – makes only passing reference to the “strategic requirements” of MCF in a section on the PLA Strategic Support Force, and the official English version of the paper mistranslates the term to “aligning civil and military endeavors.” 

And now, with the March release of the 15th Five Year Plan outline, without a single reference to MCF, it might be reasonably concluded that China has abandoned its MCF strategy. 

MCF Retreats to the Shadows

Yet there was still one authoritative document that continued to hold high the MCF banner, and this was the most authoritative of them all: the CCP Charter. As Erik Quam pointed out, MCF remained in the Charter even after its 2022 revision, at a time when the party-state had otherwise ceased using the term. Specifically, the Charter cited the MCF Development Strategy as one of seven strategies that the CCP was pledged to implement.

Even more revealing, China’s party-state did not dismantle the organizations it had created to implement its MCF strategy. The Central MCF Development Commission survived the purge of MCF content from the 14th Five Year Plan, with references to its “office” as recently as 2022. Moreover, the provincial level counterpart MCF development commissions, established in 2017, are alive and well. Shandong province, for example, has an MCF Development Commission, with an office carrying out the day-to-day work on its behalf. As of last year, it remained operational. The same goes for the MCF office in Hainan province. The Fujian government website still includes the office of the province’s MCF Development Commission in its list of party and government organizations.

With a little probing, one readily finds evidence of the cover-up. Guangdong’s 14th Five Year Plan outline (January 2021), a document that contains no substantial reference to MCF, revealed in an appendix that the province intended to issue a “14th Five Year Plan for the Deep Development of MCF.” This suggests that not only have other provinces drafted their own MCF development plans, but there almost certainly exists a national plan by the same name. None of these has ever been publicly released. 

Clumsy efforts by China-based companies and organizations to hide their association with MCF are easily picked apart. In 2016, the climax of MCF mania, the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, together with the PLA Navy Submarine Academy, created the “Joint Laboratory for Maritime MCF.” The laboratory, led by Rear Admiral Da Lianglong, a renowned PLA Navy scientist, has focused on developing technologies to address China’s longstanding weakness in undersea warfare. For instance, its members have fitted underwater gliders with acoustic sensors, transforming them into tools for anti-submarine warfare. 

After the MCF term became toxic, the lab simply changed its name. Now operating as the innocuous sounding Joint Laboratory for Applied Marine Science and Technology, it continues to leverage civilian personnel and resources for projects that strike at the heart of U.S. military deterrence in the Western Pacific.

While China’s scientific research organizations no longer publicize their MCF bona fides, they clearly continue to support the strategy. One vivid example of this is found in the Chinese Academy of Science Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering, located in Hainan Province. The organization, which Xi visited in April 2018, operates manned and unmanned submersibles, from the South China Sea to the Arctic Ocean to the coast of Chile. To discretely facilitate the secure transfer of knowledge, expertise, and information to the PLA, and perhaps conduct operations on its behalf, the institute employs a staff member named Xing Luru, who is responsible for “work related to military-civil fusion and protecting classified information.” 

In sum, instead of abandoning MCF, as suggested by the country’s most authoritative documents, the Chinese party-state merely brought the whole initiative into the shadows. The cost of transparency had simply grown too high.

To some, the tale of MCF is hardly worth telling. Of course, the Chinese party-state lies and conceals! However, this story offers valuable lessons for China watchers, who, often captive to the belief that their cultural and language fluency gives them special access to the “truth,” tend to forget this point.

While potentially useful, “authoritative” documents have limited utility in understanding China’s intentions. As the case of MCF shows, the party-state has no scruples about excising sensitive content that risks harming China’s image or provoking a negative policy response from foreign states. That MCF – a “national strategy” personally championed by Xi Jinping – could be removed wholesale from public documents suggests that nothing is too sacred. This fact should cast doubt on the empirical value of almost every authoritative party-state document, especially in the sensitive realm of national defense/security, because one simply cannot know what content has been omitted. 

The case of MCF further illustrates the old dictum that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” This rule is not applied widely enough in the contemporary China studies field. One looks in vain in authoritative government documents for any clues that China would build, almost overnight, an immensely powerful navy. Yes, in April 2018 Xi exhorted the PLA Navy to transform itself into a “world-class navy,” but the timeline for achieving this goal was set at “mid-century,” and no authoritative source has ever defined what “world-class” even means. Meanwhile, China has built “world-class” warships at a breathtaking rate and is deploying them in ever more sophisticated operations around Taiwan, in the Indian Ocean, and beyond. 

The disappearance of MCF also strongly suggests that it is unwise to compare one iteration of a state document to another, a mistake that I myself have made in the past, and others continue to make today. To illustrate the perils, the 13th Five Year Plan outline contained a section on “safeguarding China’s maritime rights and interests,” which generally refers to efforts by Beijing to defend its maritime claims in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. However, that section was absent from the 14th Five Year Plan outline, only to return in the 15th Five Year Plan outline. This, of course, does not mean that from 2021-25 China became a good neighbor. Far from it: in fact, during this period China’s aggression against the Philippines reached unprecedented levels.

Concerns about missing content are especially pronounced in authoritative documents that, by their very nature, are distillations intended for public release, such as Xinhua News Agency summaries of leader speeches. As a case in point, in July 2013, Xi offered remarks at a Politburo meeting on the CCP’s strategy for transforming China into a “maritime power” (海洋强国). Xinhua did not publish the full speech, but it did issue a summary. That summary is considered a key document for anyone seeking to understand China’s approach to the sea. Yet, despite its “authority,” it is not a reliable source. 

Thanks to a mistake by staff members at Xiamen University, a full text of Xi’s speech was mistakenly placed online, revealing precisely what CCP propaganda organs chose to remove in the distillation process. Relying on the summary alone, one might conclude that there was no naval dimension to China’s maritime power strategy. However, in his speech, Xi actually called for China to “accelerate the pace of naval modernization” (加快海军现代化建设步伐). Had foreign observers seen that part, they would have had a firmer basis for predicting, to at least some degree, the massive expansion of the PLA Navy since 2012.

In sum, the problem of selective omission in Chinese state and party documents is a huge, perhaps insuperable, challenge to heavy reliance on “authoritative” sources to gauge Beijing’s intentions. Indeed, this probably explains why those who have done so, including many influential scholars in think tanks and academia, have consistently underestimated China’s military ambitions. Fortunately, there is hope for the rest of us: the fact that MCF references can still be found in the universe of Chinese sources – despite Beijing’s best efforts to conceal them – shows that the truth is still out there for those who can find the missing words. 

Ryan D. Martinson is a researcher at the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute. The opinions and views expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Government, U.S. Department of War or its components, to include the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.

China military modernization

military-civilian fusion

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