Weighing Giants: Taking Stock of the Expansion of China’s Defence Industry

Lucie Béraud-Sudreau and Meia Nouwens

Defence and Peace Economics, 2021, vol. 32, issue 2, 151-177

Abstract: Despite China’s rise on the world stage and rapid improvements in the quality and quantity of its arms production, little is truly known about Chinese defence groups’ performance. The existing literature suffers from a significant gap: there has been no measure of how much the Chinese defence industry is worth financially, in comparison to other leading defence firms. There is also a dearth in detailed assessments of China’s defence-industrial and defence-innovation capacities. Therefore, this article seeks to provide reliable estimates of Chinese defence enterprises’ revenue derived from their military-related activities. In discussing our results, we also show that the current Chinese leadership’s defence-industry reforms specifically target self-identified shortcomings and in doing so, strives to bring Chinese defence companies to the top of the world’s defence-technological innovation standards. This will contribute to the debate on China’s defence-innovation capabilities and on the Chinese defence industry’s remaining weaknesses in that regard.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2019.1632536

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