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China Plans to Use New Tech Like AI To 'Win Wars' Amid US Concerns

Saibal Dasgupta

   BEIJING - China's military says it is focused on harnessing new
   technologies to "fight and win wars" in the future and is competing
   with the United States in boosting the regional influence of its People
   Liberation Army.

   A new government "white paper" highlights how new technologies like
   artificial intelligence and cloud computing are essential for the
   military, saying new capabilities under development are "long-range
   precision, intelligent, stealthy and unmanned." At the same time, the
   paper laments that China still lags behind other countries in terms of
   military technology.
   "While it is true the PLA still lags behind other militaries, in
   particular the United States', in some technologies, Beijing has
   launched a major campaign to close this technological gap with the
   West. Policies and strategies like civil-military integration or Made
   in China 2025, among others, are helping the Chinese military to
   quickly catch up with or surpass foreign militaries," said Johannes
   Heller of Mercator Institute of China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin.

   The PLA has made huge strides over the past decade-and-a-half in terms
   of technological catch-up, said Sourabh Gupta, senior fellow at the
   U.S. China Institute in Washington.

   "That said, from a strictly military-technological perspective, the PLA
   is still clearly out-matched by key Western militaries as well as by
   the Russians. So while they have downplayed in the White Paper how
   competitive they have become, it is true that still lag quite-some-way
   behind the leaders in this space," Gupta said.

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