Reproducing the party army: Ontological security in Chinese military innovation

Abstract Amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the People’s Liberation Army’s rapid innovation has refocused academic attention on the contours of future warfare. Mainstream rationalist approaches typically analyze China’s military rise by reifying identity and interests and by positing a linear link between technological innovation and national power. From this vantage, the PLA’s growing innovation is seen as increasing systemic war risks through preventive logic, offense–defense imbalance, and expansion of non-kinetic warfare. In contrast, this article explains Xi-era military innovation through the materialist dialectics of Sinicized Marxism. This shows that as new-quality productive forces are converted into new-quality combat capabilities, party-led routines work to internalize self-restraint and rule compliance in the armed forces, reducing information asymmetries at the human–machine interface. The hegemonic reproduction of the party-army is a constitutive practice through which the Chinese Communist Party enhances ontological security, contributing to debates on how military innovation is produced and organized in authoritarian regimes.