On December 19, 2025, when the Chinese Central Military Commission’s (CMC) Equipment Development Department (EDD) released a new set of guidelines in a bid to eliminate its most systemic and deep-rooted challenges: corruption in procurement and inefficiency in weapons management. Titled “Professional Ethics and Conduct Norms,” the report’s subtext revolves around the grim admission of entrenched graft and inefficiency in procuring and maintaining the very weapons systems at the heart of China’s defense modernization and aggressive foreign policy.

The new guidelines center their political rhetoric on “Xi Jinping Thought on Managing and Improving Equipment Development” and the need for “loyally manufacturing” weapons for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But beyond the moral exhortations, the guidelines mandate rigor in “scientific gatekeeping,” “rigid benchmarks” for orientation towards actual combat conditions, and “honest quotations” to avoid price inflation.

Because the EDD ecosystem focuses less on combat preparedness and free-market competition, and more on the inward slashing of prices and guanxi (the social networks that facilitate business deals), the situation today is such that the department’s very structure has become corrosive to the ambitions of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) modernization.

To understand the severity of the current crisis, one must look back to the CMC EDD’s July 2023 “Solicitation of Clues” announcement regarding violations by procurement experts and equipment management officials. That announcement came at a time when US intelligence........

© The National Interest