For decades, China’s talk of letting the private sector bid for defence orders had mostly been just that: talk.
State-owned conglomerates had dominated the sector for decades, but in the middle of 2016, Beijing started to step up its military-civilian fusion strategy, publishing an official list of the sectors where private firms were being encouraged to contribute, such as swarming drone technologies.
The plan is a central pillar of China’s ambition to develop a modernised military by 2035 and…
