Comprehensive Development of Military and Civilian Integration

It is the strategic thinking and development road of coordinating economic construction and national defense construction in China. It deeply integrates national defense and military modernization into the economic and social development system and combines national defense and military modernization with economic and social development in a wider range, and at a higher and deeper level, providing abundant resources for national defense and military modernization and impetus for sustainable development. The strategic thinking of military-civilian integrated development was first sprouted in the early 1950s when the new China’s defense technology industry was preliminarily established. Mao Zedong first put forward the important idea of “military and civilian dual use”. China's national defense industry began to implement the development policy of “combination of peace and war, military-civilian integration, military-oriented, and military-implied into-civilian”.

Deng Xiaoping further proposed the 16-character policy of “combining military and civilian, combining peace and war, giving priority to military products, and supporting the military with civilian products” in the early stage of Reform and Opening-up. Jiang Zemin emphasized the “combining military and civilian, combining military efforts with civilian support, active coordination, and independent innovation”. Hu Jintao linked the realization of the unity of building a rich country and a strong army with the specific stage of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and proposed a path of military-civilian integrated development.

These important thoughts come down in one continuous line and keep pace with the times. After the 18th CPC National Congress, the military-civilian integrated development has become a national strategy. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee clearly proposed to “promote the in-depth military-civilian integrated development.” On January 22, 2017, the CPC Central Committee decided to set up a Central Military-Civilian Integrated Development Committee to guide and coordinate the in-depth military-civilian integrated development. Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized that it is necessary to form an in-depth military-civilian integrated development pattern involving all elements, multiple fields, and high benefits, improve the integration mechanism, enrich the integration situation, expand the integration scope, and enhance the integration level. The theory and practice of forming in-depth military-civilian integrated development is a major achievement in the long-term exploration of the coordinated development law of economic construction and national defense construction, and a major decision made from the perspective of the overall situation of national security and development strategies.

The “in-depth military-civilian integrated development” has more abundant connotations: First of all, military-civilian integration is multi-field and all-round integration. Mainly include the military-civilian integration of weapon and equipment research and production system, military personnel training system, military support system, national defense mobilization system, scientific and technological resource system, etc., promoting the rational development and cooperative use of military-civilian marine, space, airspace, surveying and mapping, navigation, meteorology, spectrum and other resources, military-civilian joint construction of shared infrastructure, promoting the connectivity, mutual complementarity and shared use of military and civilian resources. Secondly, integration requires in-depth development, coordinating the “integration” of the overall design of military-civilian development. At the national level, establish the unified leadership, military-civilian coordination, demand docking, and resource sharing mechanisms for military-civilian integrated development, improve the military-civilian common standard system, accelerate the legislative process of military-civilian coordinated construction, establish and improve the action mechanism for military-civilian joint response to major crises and emergencies, and build a national defense mobilization system that is compatible with winning informatized wars and integrating emergency and battle response.

The 19th CPC National Congress clearly put forward the mission and task of forming an in-depth military-civilian integrated development pattern. The proposal and implementation of the strategic thinking of “in-depth military-civilian integrated development” is an accurate grasp of Marxist principles on the dialectical relationship between military and economy by the Communist Party of China, and is an empirical result that has been explored and formed in the long-term revolution and construction practices, reflecting CPC’s in-depth understanding of the law of coordinated development of national defense construction and economic construction. This road is related to the overall situation of national security and development strategies, and will have a major and far-reaching impact on the long-term stability of the country and the great cause of national rejuvenation.