In a notice on Thursday, the PLA’s procurement oversight department said the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) was suspended from taking part in military procurement for goods, projects, and services.
The notice said the suspension was a penalty for bid rigging and collusion, but did not say how long the ban would last.
The institute was also put on a military procurement suspension list in January, disqualifying its joint bid with Tsinghua University for a 150 million yuan (US$21 million) project.
Details of the projects were classified but other bidders included the CAS Shanghai Advanced Research Institute and China Electronics System Engineering Company, suggesting the tender was for communications infrastructure.
The aerospace institute was formed in 2019 through a merger of CAS institutes specialising in electronics, remote sensing and optoelectronics.
It carries out core research in communication and information processing, aircraft design, remote sensing radar systems and electronic countermeasure systems – areas closely aligned with military needs.
