Development and Significance. The Party has explored the concept of leveraging or integrating the combined contributions of the military and civilian sectors since the PRC’s founding. The current MCF concept initially took root in the early 2000s as the Party sought methods to enhance the PRC’s overall development. This led Party leaders to call for improving “military-civilian integration” that echoed the collaboration between the defense and civilian sectors that China observed in the United States and other developed countries. Implementation of these efforts stalled due to a lack of centralized government control and the organizational barriers that exist across the party-state. Coinciding with the 11th FYP (2006-2010), the PRC began replacing “military-civilian integration” with “military-civilian fusion.” In 2007, Party officials publicly noted the change from “integration” to “fusion” was not merely cosmetic but broadened the scope to include all available economic resources in the promotion of the defense industry.
Since that time, MCF’s ambitions have grown in scope and scale as the Party has come to view it as a means to bridge the PRC’s economic and social development with its security development in support of the PRC’s national strategy to renew China. As such, the Party has continued to elevate MCF’s importance. In 2015, the CCP Central Committee elevated the MCF Development Strategy to a national-level strategy to serve as a bridge between the PRC’s national development strategy and its national security strategy, later also adding building “integrated national strategic systems and capabilities” (一体化的国家战略体系和能力), both of which support the PRC’s goal of national rejuvenation.
Since early 2022, the Party appears to have been deemphasizing the term MCF in public, in favor of “integrated national strategic systems and capabilities.” This term appears to have originated in June 2017 when Xi addressed the first meeting of the Central Committee’s Central Commission for Military-Civil Fusion Development and charged them with gradually building up “China’s integrated national strategic systems and capabilities.” Xi used “integrated national strategic systems and capabilities” in conjunction with “military-civilian fusion” in his 2017 speech to the 19th Party Congress, suggesting that completion of major projects, achievements in defense research, and improved MCF would contribute to building the PRC’s overarching integrated national strategic systems and capabilities. In December 2017, three PLA National Defense University (NDU) scholars published a study expanding on that concept, asserting that MCF was part of a near-term goal to establish basic “deep development patterns.” The NDU academics maintained that once that was accomplished, the PRC could move on to its ultimate goal of building “integrated national strategic systems and capabilities.” Notably, the language in the study closely mirrored that of national policies, making it possible that the authors played a significant role in helping draft the strategy. Their interpretation of Xi’s speech was supported by numerous other writings that came out following the 19th Party Congress in 2017.
Xi’s work report to the 20th Party Congress in October 2022 omitted any mention of MCF, only calling for “consolidating and enhancing integrated national security strategies and capabilities,” and then addressing many of the components traditionally associated with MCF. This same formulation was used in March 2023 by Xi and CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia in their separate addresses to PLA and People’s Armed Police delegates to the 14th National People’s
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OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China
