2012-02-24 (China Military News cited from Matthew Luce) -- This year marks the 10th anniversary of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (zhongguo dianzi keji jituan gongsi) - known better by its acronym CETC - one of China's 10 official defense industry conglomerate-bureaucracies [1].

CETC's operations are central to China's push toward dual-use electronics and civil-military integration for information technology. CETC is an entirely state-owned, research and development behemoth with the professed goals of producing advanced electronics for China's military and leveraging civilian technology in order to do so [2].

The organization combines the advantages of state research funding and government favoritism with a market-oriented business model. Far from being a dinosaur in the modern electronics business, it has managed to grow and profit in diverse economic sectors and has forged partnerships with some of the biggest names in electronics.

The broad reach of CETC's business relationships combined with its self-described "sacred mission" of "rich country, strong army" make CETC worthy of closer inspection from anyone concerned with the national defense implications of the Chinese electronics and IT industries.

Origin and function
Under CETC's organizational umbrella are 80,000 employees and myriad subsidiaries. CETC oversees 55 semi-autonomous research institutes (often referred to as RIs) - many of which predate CETC itself and have existed since Mao Zedong's defense modernization push in the late 1950s and 1960s. CETC also includes 184 commercial subsidiary companies - most of which were created by the individual research institutes in the past 20 years.

While CETC itself is a young organization, the research institutes that conduct most of its research and production are the oldest electronics research facilities in China. They are responsible for many of China's major advances in defense electronics, including the electronics for the "Two Bombs and One Satellite" initiative that gave China its first nuclear bomb, guided missile, and geo-orbital satellite. Today, CETC produces a wide range of products for military and civilian markets - from lasers and radar arrays to washing machines and power plants.

Despite its size and its explicit role in developing tactical electronics for the People's Liberation Army (PLA), CETC is not well known outside a small community of China defense analysts. Large private companies like Huawei and ZTE have drawn much more attention and suspicion, most recently becoming the focus of respective US Commerce Department and House intelligence committee investigations.

While it is possible and even likely that private corporations like Huawei and ZTE engage in business dealings with the PLA, they nonetheless primarily are interested in the civilian market, and any contracts with the PLA would comprise only a tiny fraction of their total business. At minimum, Huawei and ZTE deny any direct allegiance to the PLA.