China Awarded 2,800 Military AI Contracts, Many to Private Sector: Report

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Sep 7, 2025 - 10:01 Updated: Sep 6, 2025 - 20:30
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China Awarded 2,800 Military AI Contracts, Many to Private Sector: Report
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The Chinese communist regime issued more than 2,800 military contracts for artificial intelligence-related goods and services over a two-year period, a new report has found.

Notably, a majority of the entities that received two or more such contracts were so-called “non-traditional vendors,” organizations with no overt ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The report, published in early September by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology think tank, found that “an emerging class of firms and universities... with no self-reported state ownership ties” were accelerating the CCP’s military and commercial AI development.

The report compiled a data set of 2,857 award notices for AI-related contracts by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the military wing of the CCP, issued from January 2023 to December 2024.

The researchers then examined the 338 entities that won at least two such awards, of which 243 were non-traditional vendors.

“These entities appear to be playing a substantial role in providing AI-related technologies to the PLA, potentially accelerating technological development and AI diffusion throughout the Chinese military,” the report reads.

A New Vanguard of CCP Militarism

The report connects the emergence of China’s non-traditional AI vendors, most of which were founded in the last 15 years, to Beijing’s strategic doctrine of military-civil fusion.

Under military-civil fusion, the CCP has sought to closely integrate China’s defense and civilian sectors, effectively building up a domestic startup culture capable of creating innovative new technologies that have both civil and military applications.

To that end, the report notes that many of the companies that received multiple AI-related contracts from the PLA “focus on developing dual-use technologies, indicating that these firms see both the civilian and defense sectors as avenues for growth.”

Those companies were also likely helped directly or indirectly by the relatively unabated flow of cash into the Chinese technology sector by American venture capital firms in recent decades, which has supercharged Beijing’s development of AI technologies, including those used by the PLA.

One such company, iFlytek, was previously sanctioned by the U.S. government for its alleged role in surveilling the Uyghur ethno-religious minority group in China. iFlytek was also alleged by the House Select Committee on the CCP to have directly partnered with American venture capital firm GRS Ventures on multiple AI projects.

The new report found that iFlytek was the only non-traditional vendor to be awarded 20 AI-related contracts by the PLA, further underscoring the possibility that U.S. support of Chinese AI firms could promote the CCP’s military development.

That outcome would fit with the understanding of the scope and scale of military-civil fusion which, according to a fact sheet published by the U.S. State Department during the first Trump administration, includes efforts to obtain “the intellectual property, key research, and technological advances of the world’s citizens, researchers, scholars, and private industry in order to advance the CCP’s military aims.”
Relatedly, a new report published on Sept. 5 by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found that U.S. military-funded research continued to make its way into China’s civil-military apparatus.

That report identified approximately 1,400 research papers published between June 2023 and June 2025, which acknowledged receiving funding or research support from the Defense Department that also involved collaboration with China-based entities.

It also found “...a pervasive and deeply troubling pattern of U.S. taxpayer-funded research being conducted in collaboration with Chinese entities that are directly tied to China’s defense research and industrial base—many of which appear on various U.S. government entity lists—and state-sponsored talent recruitment programs.”

Problems for US Foreign Policy

These reports demonstrate the difficulty that Washington has had in trying to isolate Beijing’s ability to rapidly advance its technological and military capabilities.

As such, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology’s report acknowledged the deeply thorny task of trying to identify new non-traditional vendors in the CCP’s domestic supply chain, as well as how to appropriately sanction such entities when they rapidly develop overseas facilities and operations.

“Many of the entities in our dataset have established research facilities or commercial operations abroad. Most are not subject to U.S. sanctions or trade restrictions,” the report reads.

“As the boundaries between civilian and defense technologies blur, the United States will face difficult trade-offs between preserving the openness necessary for innovation while mitigating national security risks.”

To that end, the report suggests that the United States’ efforts to curb China’s military modernization have been sidestepped to some degree as the CCP has succeeded in creating a decently competitive domestic defense sector.

“These challenges highlight the difficulty the United States and its allies face in simultaneously advancing their technological progress while hampering the PLA’s ability to develop, acquire, and adopt advanced technologies,” the report reads.

“Moreover, our findings could indicate that China has, to some degree, succeeded in fostering competition within its historically inefficient defense sector.”

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