ABSTRACT
China's military industrial base supports a comprehensive and integrated program producing items from radios to thermonuclear weapons. The cornerstone of China's defense industrial establishment is the machine building industries. Indigenous versions of pistols, recoilless rifles, light and heavy machine guns and other semiautomatic and automatic weapons are also produced. Chinese policymakers since Li Hongzhang have had to face this fundamental choice, not only in internal industrialization strategies, but also in foreign procurement. The agricultural crisis that followed forced China to shift machine building priorities once again to emphasize agricultural machinery, chemical fertilizer production equipment, and petroleum industry machinery. The major issues are those of budgetary allocation by the state to the defense industries on the whole and competing priorities within the various sectors. The Fifth Ministry of Machine Building is responsible for producing all munitions and conventional military hardware. Finally, a few words about the location and organization of the electronics industry are in order.
