China initially established a system for mobilization of national economy after the founding of New China in 1949. In the 1960s and 1970s, China undertook the construction of mobilization of national economy with preparations against war as the primary task. In the 1980s, the national economy mobilization began transformation in four fields: transformation from purely serving the war demands to serving both national defense and economic construction, focusing on the combination of both military effectiveness and economic efficiency; transformation from playing a unitary administrative role under the planned economy to that of an overall regulation and control under the socialist market economy to gradually form a management mechanism using multiple means related to law, economy and administration; transformation from building the military production capacity in the pre-war state to enhancing the converting ability from peacetime production to wartime production with the emphasis on building up economic potentials for national defense; and transformation from general mobilization preparations to partial mobilization preparations with priority given to rapid mobilization against contingencies in major directions and key areas.

    At the new historical stage, following the principles of combining peacetime needs with wartime needs and having military and civilian purposes compatible with each other while reserving the military capabilities in civilian potentials, China's national economy mobilization makes great progress in the construction of national economy mobilization and steadily improves the capacity of national economy mobilization by observing the principles of centralized leadership, responsibility at different levels, overall planning, construction of key projects, long-term preparations and gradual development. A three-level (central, provincial and prefectural) management system to mobilize national economy has initially taken shape with the attention paid to handling major contingencies and emergencies, thus creating conditions, in terms of system, for national economy to turn rapidly from peacetime production to wartime production. Making full use of advanced information technologies, China has initially established a digital information platform for national economy mobilization, thus improving the speed and efficiency of turning peacetime production to wartime production. The capability of national economy to turn peacetime production into wartime production in 2003 was 12.44 percent higher than that of the previous year. The contributions made by science and technology to national economy mobilization rose by 3.53 percentage points compared with that of the previous year.