Chinese president takes on new role to spearhead civilian-military tech transfer
Chinese President Xi Jinping will head up a new committee to champion integration of civilian and military investment and technology.
The Politburo announced the committee’s formation on Sunday after a meeting chaired by Xi.
The creation of the committee comes as China is expanding its military hardware aggressively and hoping to better tap into innovation, investment and production capacity in the civilian sector.
The body will coordinate and decide on major integration issues and report to the Politburo and its Standing Committee, according to Xinhua.
Military-civilian integration is one of the goals of China’s 13th five-year plan for 2016-2020.
In 2015, Central Military Commission vice-chairman Xu Qiliang called for China to develop a military-industrial complex like the one in the US to help build a modern army.