China is building the Industrial Internet as a national digital system capable of serving across civilian industry, defense industry, and military-relevant production at scale. If that architecture matures and functions as described, it may become one of the most important Military-Civil Fusion systems Beijing has ever developed.

Military-Civil Fusion is often misunderstood because the English phrase sounds familiar. It can sound like “civil-military integration,” defense innovation, dual-use technology, or closer cooperation between commercial industry and the military. But China’s Military-Civil Fusion is not the same thing. It is a Party-state national development strategy for integrating economic development, defense construction, science and technology, industrial capacity, and national strategic capability. Treating it as a familiar Western concept makes it easier to miss what is distinctive about the Chinese system.

Military-Civil Fusion did not simply become less visible after the term grew politically costly abroad. In important areas, it changed form. The clearest example is China’s Industrial Internet.1 What appears on the surface as manufacturing modernization, enterprise digitalization, or industrial cloud construction also creates a platform architecture for discovering, connecting, securing, coordinating, and mobilizing industrial resources across supply chains.

By Party definition, Military-Civil Fusion stretches across China’s entire industrial system, both military and civilian. By Party design, the Industrial Internet offers a platform for bringing military and civilian industrial supply chains into closer convergence at national scale. The process is not complete, but it has been underway for more than a decade.

China’s Military-Civil Fusion is not Western-style civil-military integration, and it is changing form inside the Industrial Internet, where strategy becomes infrastructure.

Bottom Lines

There are two bottom-line conclusions on Military-Civil Fusion and the Industrial Internet from the analysis on this website:

First, Military-Civil Fusion is a Party-state led national development strategy, not simply another form of civil-military integration or dual-use convergence. The strategy seeks to lower barriers between national development and national security, economic construction and defense construction, and military and civilian resources. In effect, the strategy seeks to systematize dual-use ambiguity at scale.

Second, Military-Civil Fusion is changing form from a visible strategy and technology-transfer concept into a platform-based industrial architecture. It is entering Industrial Internet platforms, data systems, identifier-resolution networks, industrial software, cloud-connected equipment, supply-chain tools, security systems, and lifecycle-management infrastructure. In effect, strategy is becoming infrastructure.

Reference Guide Roadmap

If this is your first encounter with Military-Civil Fusion and the Industrial Internet, the sections below provide a structured primer on their strategic relationship, system architecture, historical evolution, and underlying political logic.

Explainers: Military-Civil Fusion and the Industrial Internet

Case Studies: Military-Civil Fusion and the Industrial Internet

NGIT | Can the Industrial Internet Advance Military-Civil Fusion?

The Industrial Internet is important for understanding the future of Military-Civil Fusion: not merely as another manufacturing technology, but as a possible platform architecture for organizing military and civilian industrial resources across entire strategic industrial chains.

Case Studies: Military-Civil Fusion and New Type Infrastructure

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Footnote

  1. While not exhaustive, the following English-language papers, listed chronologically, offer excellent background on the Industrial Internet in China. Notably, Jeff Pao is one of the few writers In English who have accurately linked the Industrial Internet to the Digital China strategy:

    Qiu Ping, “Progress in Developing the Industrial Internet in China,” Qiushi, June 09, 2025

    Nicholas Welch, “Manufacturing’s Missing Revolution: Lessons the techno-industrial competition with China,” ChinaTalk, March 03, 2025

    Liu Yanyan, “What Is the Industrial Internet?” Huawei Info-Finder, July 01, 2024

    Mary Hui, “China bets on industrial AI: Doing so sidesteps its US tech dependence and amplifies its manufacturing might,” a/symmetric, April 26, 2024

    John Lee, “China and the Industrial Internet of Things,” Leiden Asia Centre, June 23, 2023

    Jeff Pao, “Chinese industries to go digital or die ‘Digital China’ plan emphasizes ‘industrial internet’ in a state-led drive for world-class competitiveness and supply chain supremacy,” Asia Times, March 11, 2023

    Matt Sheehan, “Remaking “Made in China”: Beijing’s Industrial Internet Ambitions,” MacroPolo, February 22, 2021 ↩︎