Beijing: Xi Jinping said it is important to promote defence modernisation and build the military into a "Great Wall of Steel" while delivering the closing speech of the National People's Congress of the Communist Party of China which concluded on March 13, reported The Singapore Post.

American security experts reacted that Xi Jinping's third term will involve "military-civilian integration" and spying activities and stealing Western technology to boost the pace of military modernisation.

According to a report published in The Singapore Post, an Ex-US defence official revealed that China has a fifth-generation stealth jet similar to the US F-22 fighter jet, largely due to continuous intellectual property theft. Former US Acting Deputy Secretary James Anderson said in an interview with Fox News, as quoted by The Singapore Post, that "without espionage, the Chinese J-20 fighter jet cannot compete with it. It is more advanced now, and that is the point."

"For many years, China has profited greatly from theft," Anderson said. "They have used theft well and have developed an advanced fifth-generation fighter jet." The actual combat comparison of F-22 Raptor fighters.

A retired US Air Force colonel, Terry Thompson, told Voice of America (VOA), as cited by The Singapore Post, that China mostly steals engine and power system technologies. "China does not have the ability to coat aircraft with invisible materials. They just steal from the United States."

China's military expenditure has increased significantly by 7.2 per cent this year. On March 8 Xi Jinping, when receiving delegations from the army and the armed police force, said that the key is to work hard on "integration."

VOA reported, as quoted by The Singapore Post, that China, not only in the field of fifth-generation fighter jets but also the sixth-generation fighter jets, supersonic weapons and missiles, and even the spy balloon that crossed the continental United States last month, all seem to incorporate elements of American technology behind it.

The US State Department described China's "military-civil fusion" strategy and said China is developing and acquiring key technologies through legal and illegal means, including blatant theft. Thompson said that the CCP lacks a solid technological foundation and has a long history of stealing from the shoulders of the free world.

VOA reported, as mentioned in The Singapore Post, that Chinese intelligence tricks include espionage beauty tricks, and bribes to buy American contractors, university professors, and government officials, as well as high-tech cyber activities to steal key information on military weapons. "We are going to see more and more espionage, looking at how the United States builds aircraft carriers, how they build aircraft that land on them, and so on," Thompson said.

About 100 NPC and CPPCC delegates this year come from state-owned military enterprises, and chip and artificial intelligence companies. In addition, the new State Council has many senior officials from the military field, and the new Minister of Defence Li Shangfu has also been sanctioned by the United States, reported Nikkei Asia, as cited by The Singapore Post.

Thompson said that the United States urgently needs to increase its deployment of troops in the Western Pacific and cut off the Chinese military's access to American technology. China wants to become the dominant power in the Pacific Ocean, which will be its development goal in the next few decades, Thompson said, "we need to stop them in time," The Singapore Post reported.