Professional Affiliation

Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University

Expert Bio

Jeffrey Ding is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. His book Technology and the Rise of Great Powers, published with Princeton University Press, investigates how past technological revolutions influenced the rise and fall of great powers. Ding’s research has been published in European Journal of International Relations, Foreign Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Political Economy, and Security Studies. He received his PhD in 2021 from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and earned his B.A. in 2016 at the University of Iowa.

Wilson Center Project

You Get the Best of Both Worlds? Benchmarking China’s Civil-Military Integration Efforts

Project Summary

U.S. policymakers and researchers increasingly converge on the view that China possesses a decisive advantage in civil-military integration. At the same time, Chinese assessments identify a vast gap between the extent of civil-military integration in China versus the corresponding U.S. level. Even though a state’s capacity to intermix its defense and commercial industrial bases is a crucial aspect of military innovation and industrial policy, scholars lack a reliable way to measure this variable. Aimed at correcting this gap, this project proposes a novel framework to measure integration across various channels through which the commercial and defense sectors can foster synergistic relationships. This novel measure is then applied to more systematically assess China’s “military-civil fusion” efforts.