| Agency Name: | Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission |
| Nativename A: | 中央军委装备发展部 |
| Seal: | China Emblem PLA.svg |
| Formed: | 2016 |
| Jurisdiction: | People's Liberation Army |
| Headquarters: | Ministry of National Defense compound ("August 1st Building"), Beijing |
| Chief1 Name: | Xu Xueqiang |
| Chief1 Position: | Director |
| Agency Type: | Functional department of the Central Military Commission |
| Parent Agency: | Central Military Commission |
| Child1 Agency: | China Manned Space Agency |
The Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission [1] is a major unit of deputy theater grade under the Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China. It was founded on January 11, 2016, under Xi Jinping's military reforms.[2] The department mission is to coordinate, oversee, and foster the development and acquisition of military technology.[3] Gen. Zhang Youxia served as the first director. The current director is Xu Xueqiang. It also registers the patents related to military technology. The Manned Flight Office is also hosted there, meaning that the Department plays a critical role in the Chinese space program.[4]
The predecessor organization of the Equipment Development Department was the General Armaments Department of the People's Liberation Army (中国人民解放军总装备部, Pinyin Zhōnggúo Rénmín Jiěfàngjūn Zǒng Zhuāngbèibù), which was also attached to the (then differently organized) Central Military Commission. The primary task of this authority was to check and constantly monitor the field unit's spending behavior on equipment and ensure careful accounting, to try to control both corruption and wasteful expenditure. The Department was also responsible for long-term planning of procurement projects, for quality control of military equipment, and for dealing with patents important for national defense.
At that time, the General Armaments Department was in control of the Lop Nor nuclear test site, the weapons test centers in Baicheng and Huayin and the Luoyang test center, as well as the entire space industry, from the rocket launch sites to the Xi'an satellite control center to the Human Spaceflight Bureau and the People's Liberation Army's astronaut corps. In addition, the Armaments Department operated the Academy for NBC Defense (中国人民解放军防化研究院) in Changping, Beijing, the People's Liberation Army Equipment Academy in Huairou, Beijing; the Academy of Armored Forces (中国人民解放军装甲兵学院) in Fengtai, Beijing; and the Academy of Military Mechanical Engineering (中国人民解放军军械工程学院) in Wuhan. A very complex set of institutions to manage.
The General Armaments Department was dissolved in November 2015 as part of the comprehensive Reform of National Defense and the Military, with the main goal initially being to break up old structures and networks. [5] The instructions given to the new Equipment Development Department were clearly to attack corruption, and increase efficiency in the procurement and R&D process.
To simplify the new organism's task, responsibility for the space assets of the Armaments Department was mostly transferred to the Strategic Support Force, and centralized structures for the testing and evaluation of equipment were established.
Since 2018, the Equipment Development Department has had the following organizational structure:
The Equipment Development Department has responsibility for the procurement of a very wide range of military equipment: from 10 mm Beanbag rounds for riot control[6] to mobile laser communication systems,[7] up to Su-35 fighter aircraft and S-400 Anti-aircraft missiles.
The latter systems were acquired from Russia in the late 2010's, after which the United States Department of State imposed sanctions on the Equipment Development Department and its head Li Shangfu (then a lieutenant general) in September 2018 under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.[8] This created a minor conundrum when Li Shangfu became Minister of Defense, as the sanctioning meant he could not carry out diplomatic visits the US unless given an exemption. The problem solved itself when Li was dismissed from the CMC in 2024.
The establishment of the Department for Weapons Development as part of the 2015 reforms did bring a significant change in the procurement process. Tenders became then open to the public through a website operated by the department, the “All-PLA Arms and Equipment Purchase Information Network” (全军武器装备采购信息). Formally, not only state-owned companies, but also private companies can submit bids. This opening to market competition has the dual goal of improving quality and reducing prices on the one hand, and on the other, to further the goal of "military-civilian integration" (军民融合). This entails that as much dual-use technology as possible should be developed, such as carbon fiber materials, information security in cloud computing, hybrid drives and renewable energies.[9]
In order to facilitate this integration, efforts are being made to unify the standards for software and information sharing in the military and civilian sectors.[10] A reduction on the extreme opaqueness of the old procurement process was also started. As a first practical step, the Office for Intellectual Property in National Defense lifted the secrecy of 2,346 patents relevant to defense technology in March 2017 and published them on the procurement portal of the Weapons Development Department. In April 2018, the office published 4,038 additional patents covering the areas of material science and engineering, measurement technology, radar reconnaissance, satellite navigation and communication technology . [11]