Opinion | How China’s military-industrial complex is reshaping geopolitics

As China’s defence posture alters spheres of influence and trade, its allies and rivals are recalibrating their own military policies

Reading Time:3 minutes

Published: 5:30am, 14 Apr 2025

The global military-industrial complex is tightening its grip on geopolitics. China is feeling this shift as its leaders and geopolitical rivals pursue economic security to strengthen defence-critical industries while amassing forces to challenge old rules of engagement and long-established spheres of influence.

These realities reflect a world engulfed in warfare. More than 110 armed conflicts are under way. Varying widely in scale, some are recent events while others began some 50 years ago, according to the Geneva Academy of International Law and Humanitarian Rights. Private “proxy military companies” compound the risks to global stability by operating with impunity through the exploitation of legal loopholes as countries’ surrogates.

Like China, countries on nearly every continent are increasing defence budgets to bolster their capabilities. Defence spending worldwide rose to US$2.46 trillion last year.

Countries believe national security must be vastly improved to meet evolving demands as artificial intelligence (AI) and other rapidly emerging innovations reinvent and intensify military power. Superpowers are using defence technologies to shape the global economy and exert economic dominance.

The rise of the military-industrial complex worldwide has raised concern that a propensity for conflict will prevail over international cooperation. In 1961, then-US president Dwight Eisenhower warned against such dire consequences in his farewell address.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought by the military-industrial complex,” he said. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”