Report on China’s defense S&T key labs

Here’s a nice report from the China Aerospace Studies Institute on China’s Defense S&T Key Labs (DSTKLs). Lots of charts throughout.

A fair number of defense labs in their sample of 56 were established in the early 1990s, but continued at a pace of 1-2 per year. Few of these labs are actually operated by the Chinese military itself. Most are at State Owned Enterprises, Civilian Universities, or partnerships between SOEs and Universities.

Unfortunately the report has very little about management practices, bureaucracy, and decision-making in the Chinese defense labs. However, that’s not to knock it for what it does bring. I’ll forego the indentation on the following quotes:

“… labs oftentimes will attempt to obscure their military nature, especially when collaborating with foreign partners. Notably, the “Defense” part of their name is almost never translated into English. Online evidence suggests that U.S. and other Western research institutions frequently collaborate with these defense labs, including on potentially sensitive research topics such as underwater sensor networks, 22 radar signal processing, 23 and advanced materials, 24 among many other things…

“Of the 56 current DSTKLs surveyed, 18 were managed exclusively by state-owned enterprises, while 17 were managed exclusively by civilian universities. A further 12 were co-managed by civilian universities and state-owned enterprises. Five Labs were managed by PLA research institutions or service universities. Smaller numbers were managed by partnerships between the PLA and civilian universities (3) or the PLA and state-owned enterprises (1).

“Unsurprisingly, the “Seven Sons of National Defense” are well represented amongst the civilian universities assigned DSTKLs. Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an leads with six labs, while Beihang University has five, Harbin Institute of Technology has four, Beijing Institute of Technology has three, Harbin Engineering University and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics have two each, and Nanjing University of Science and Technology has one. In total, 23 of the 32 Defense S&T Key Labs assigned to civilian universities are under one of the Seven Sons, with nine under other universities.

“… Of the labs surveyed, over half are primarily concerned with military aerospace research… Ground warfare plays a less significant role in the research landscape, with only one lab primarily devoted to ground warfare… research related to space vehicles (including satellites, manned spaceflight, etc.) and aircraft make up the two largest equipment research areas.”