Research Report on Chinese Defense Industrial Complex

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (hereafter the Commission) invites submission of proposals from contractors capable of providing a one-time report which would examine recent changes and reforms in the defense industry of the People's Republic of China (PRC), and particularly those changes which increase the capabilities of this industry to produce more sophisticated and capable weapons systems.



Key issues and questions to be addressed by the report are:



Building off of previous studies on the subject (such as the 2005 RAND Corp. study A New Direction for Chinas Defense Industry), the study would produce an updated picture of the industrys organizational infrastructure, and explicate the relationships among its major players in both government and industry.

Identify the sectors in which the industry has seen the most significant improvements in its ability to produce high-tech equipment. Identify as well the sectors in which the industry still appears to face difficulty in reforming itself, or otherwise continues to lag significantly behind the advanced defense industries of the U.S., Russia, Israel, etc.

Assess the role that U.S./Western companies may have had in contributing to improvements in the capabilities of the PRC defense industry, particularly in the area of technology transfer. Assess the extent to which access to international capital markets has strengthened PRC defense industrial companies.

Assess the extent to which reforms in the defense industry will allow the PRC to become less dependent on foreign weapons sales in the intermediate term (next 5-10 years).



A full description of the request for proposal may be found on the Commission's website at: www.uscc.gov