Xi Jinping Urges Focus on AI Integration and Oversight in PLA Strategy

On July 30, General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over a Politburo collective study session focused on high-quality national defense and military modernization ahead of Army Day. Addressing top leadership, Xi outlined strategic priorities for the upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan period, emphasizing Communist Party leadership, deep anti-corruption measures, and oversight of major defense projects. He also called for accelerating the military application of unmanned intelligent technologies and network-information systems to build an intelligentized force structure, while strengthening cross-military-civilian coordination and combat-readiness evaluations.

The Politburo session signals Beijing's policy direction for defense planning entering the 15th Five-Year Plan period. By explicitly pairing technical modernization—specifically autonomous systems and network integration—with enhanced anti-corruption mechanisms and major project supervision, Chinese leadership is seeking to ensure that expanding defense investments yield verified combat power without being compromised by procurement inefficiencies or governance failures.

On July 30, the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party held its 27th collective study session focused on advancing the high-quality modernization of national defense and the People's Liberation Army (PLA), state media reported. Presiding over the meeting ahead of China's August 1 Army Day, General Secretary Xi Jinping outlined strategic guidance for defense development during the upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan period. According to reports published by Xinhua, Sun Zheng of the Central Military Commission Strategic Planning Office delivered a presentation and provided recommendations during the session to political leadership. In his address, Xi emphasized that high-quality defense development remains an integral component of broader national modernization. Setting expectations for the 15th Five-Year Plan timeframe, he called for maintaining absolute party leadership over the military, deepening political training, and expanding anti-corruption efforts. Xi specifically instructed officials to build robust oversight systems for major defense projects to guarantee baseline standards for construction quality, operational capacity, and institutional integrity. Operational capability was highlighted as the central benchmark for evaluating modernization efforts. Xi called for accelerating the military application of unmanned intelligent technologies, advancing the deployment of network-information systems, and progressively constructing an intelligentized military architecture. He also stressed the importance of capability integration across forces alongside realistic scenario-based testing and combat readiness. Additionally, Xi highlighted the requirement to consolidate an integrated national strategic system and capabilities. Addressing civil-military coordination, he urged the execution of cross-military-civilian reform tasks to optimize governance structures, refine policy frameworks, and ensure coordinated execution across central government agencies, local authorities, and the armed forces.