China is integrating artificial intelligence (AI) throughout its military to change how it communicates, jams and fights, according to local media.
The country is reportedly advancing an “AI Plus” strategy to implement technologies in its electronic warfare (EW) systems to confuse enemy jammers, according to a South China Morning Post (SCMP) report earlier this month.
AI should be able to help Chinese researchers predict how to jam drones that are up to 5,000 kilometres away without using satellites, which the report said will be helpful for the Chinese during solar storms or electronic attacks.
China is also reportedly using AI to simulate radio behaviour in the air and sea, which could establish instant communication between drones and submarines, SCMP reported.
China is seen as the main competitor with the United States in the race to adopt AI throughout all sectors, including the military.
Euronews Next takes a closer look at what we know so far about how the country is integrating AI throughout their military.
‘XI believes that AI is the key to global power status’
In 2017, China published a development plan for the next generation of AI, which explicitly sets the goal of achieving “world-leading levels in artificial intelligence theory, technology and applications by 2030.”
It followed that up two years later with its military strategy, in which the government writes that “war is evolving towards informationized warfare, and intelligent warfare is on the horizon,” listing several technologies, including AI, as “gathering pace,” in international military competition.
The position towards an “intelligentized” military was further sharpened in a 2022 speech by President Xi Jinping, who calls on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to “gain a good grasp of the characteristics of informatized and intelligent warfare” to build “unmanned, intelligent combat capabilities.”
The PLA uses the term “intelligentized warfare” to reflect a “systemic effort” to integrate AI, robotics and unmanned systems into platforms and decision-making systems, according to Frank O’Donnell, senior research advisor with the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network (APLN).
“Xi [Jinping] himself believes that AI in particular is … the key to global power status in the 21st century,” O’Donnell told Euronews Next.
Several articles in PLA Daily, the military’s newsletter, describe China’s desire to build a human-AI model, where a military commander sets the intent and has it executed by the AI, according to a report from the Foundation for Defence of Democracies (FDD), an American think tank.
Under this model, the system would “effectively act as digital staff officers,” who assign tasks and coordinate the actions in real time, the report added.
The AI endpoint for China will likely not be fully autonomous weapons, according to O’Donnell, because the government has often emphasised the need for human control.
‘It’s hard to evaluate how far along China is’
There is very little reliable public information about how far along China is with integrating AI throughout its military operations, according to O’Donnell.
China has displayed some autonomous drones that are able to coordinate with each other to make attack decisions and overwhelm the military sensors of opponents, O’Donnell said.
The public saw China’s latest drones during last year’s Victory Parade, an annual event where the country puts its military might on display for the world.
Sam Bresnick, research fellow at Georgetown University in the United States, said the state broadcast’s announcers claimed the drones are AI-enabled, but the question is with which capabilities.
“Does it mean that they are autonomously picking targets? Does it mean they are making the decision to target people … or are they … able to autonomously navigate to certain places?” Bresnick asked.
China’s display of potential AI-assisted drones speaks to its ability to “turn out hundreds of these drones … very easily because it has such a strong manufacturing base,” O’Donnell said.
“These drone swarms are a good way to demonstrate the capability in a way that looks impressive .. but with a fairly low risk of failure,” he continued.
China also seems to be expanding AI into the navy, O’Donnell added, because the PLA demonstrated an AI-assisted decision-making system in 2025 that improved the stealth of a guided missile frigate, a warship that protects other vessels.
China has also reportedly developed “robot dogs” that could potentially move without human assistance, but Bresnick said he is not sure about how viable that technology is.
“I don’t put really any stock in those videos because they are completely controlled environments,” he said. “We don’t know if the robot … is being controlled by people off-screen.”
The PLA is likely working on many more AI technologies that neither O’Donnell nor Bresnick said they have access to.
“This would be in the building out the decision-making, sensory, communication systems and integrating AI into all that with the goal of making sure that the entire military can act more swiftly to both overwhelm and confuse the enemy,” O’Donnell explained. “It’s hard to evaluate how far along China is.”
Procurement notices from the PLA show they are interested in using the large language models (LLMs) that power AI for a range of functions, such as automating back-end operations or decision-support, Bresnick said.
There are also indications that the PLA will integrate public models, such as DeepSeek, into their operations, he added.
Where are the gaps in China’s AI implementation?
China, like the United States, anticipates that any future conflict between their countries could happen “very quickly,” with the country that has best adopted AI being the one that holds an advantage, O’Donnell said.
That’s why he believes China is trying to quickly adopt AI throughout the forces.
However, any AI-assisted weapons that China develops have not been tested in a real conflict and are instead relying on combat simulations, so their weapons will be less realistic than their US counterparts, O’Donnell and Bresnick both concluded.
“The Chinese military has not fought a war since 1979,” Bresnick said. “It’s very inexperienced by global military standards.”
Bresnick added that the PLA is interested in using AI-assisted augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies to train its forces.
China is also lacking the AI infrastructure, such as semiconductor chips and computer systems, that are needed to build AI-enabled weapons, O’Donnell added.
Recently, Chinese AI companies such as Huawei, Alibaba Group, Baidu and Xioami have said they are building AI models with made-in-China chips, but O’Donnell said there is still a technical shortfall compared to the US, where chip industry power player Nvidia is based.