The Chinese military must increase the private sector’s role in research to prevent Western sanctions from “strangling” the country’s efforts at defence innovation, a top official of the People’s Liberation Army has urged.

Zhang Zhan, political commissar of the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT), said China’s hi-tech industries were facing a “grim and complex” situation as the United States and its allies intensified their campaign to curb access to technology.

“[Western] technical restrictions are becoming increasingly surgical, with the strategic focus shifting from ‘choking current operations’ to ‘strangling future growth’,” Zhang wrote in an article published on Wednesday in the official Study Times.

The newspaper is affiliated with the Central Party School, the Communist Party’s top academy for training officials.

China must take concrete measures to “thoroughly reverse the situation of being choked by others”, Zhang asserted, identifying several sectors as “critical chokepoints” that China must master – including semiconductors, high-end industrial machine tools and fundamental software.

He also listed a few “frontier and emerging fields”, which he described as a “breeding ground” for future combat power, such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, aerospace technology and deep-sea exploration.