The head of China's state-owned military and civilian aviation company said the privatisation of state-owned enterprises was part of a foreign conspiracy to shake the foundations of the Communist Party.
He warned the PLA would be the next target once SOEs were privatised.
Lin Zuoming, chief of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (Avic), reportedly made the comment during one of the company's recent party meetings. Calls have been rising for the privatisation of SOEs to deepen economic reform.
Critics have suggested that SOEs be privatised to ensure fair competition in the market.
The debate on privatising SOEs intensified in February when the World Bank released a report suggesting that China's banking sector be privatised and calling for preferential policies for private companies to ensure fairer competition.
Earlier this month, Premier Wen Jiabao even openly criticised big state-owned banks for profiting from their oligopoly positions.
But other critics said the World Bank's suggestion would ruin the economy, that the country should still stick to a publicly-owned economy, and that ending the monopolies of SOEs did not necessarily mean privatisation.