China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
thediplomat.com
thediplomat.com
> The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a “party army,” the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, all career officers in the PLA are members of the CCP and all units at the company level and above have political officers assigned to enforce party control. Likewise, all important decisions in the PLA are made by Communist Party committees that are dominated by political officers, not by operators. This system ensures that the interests of the party’s civilian and military leaders are merged, and for this reason new Chinese soldiers entering into the PLA swear their allegiance to the CCP, not to the PRC constitution or the people of China.
> For that reason, the PLA has to engage in constant “political work” at the expense of training for combat. This means that 30 to 40 percent of an officer’s career (or roughly 15 hours per 40-hour work week) is wasted studying CCP propaganda, singing patriotic songs, and conducting small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory.
If we had ousted the monarchy 100 years ago, I'm absolutely certain that today, it would have been considered a good thing and we'd have a yearly celebration about getting rid of them, and we'd mock other countries for still being backwards and having a monarchy.
But no, we still have a monarchy, so "we" fool ourselves into thinking that it's a good thing. You can mostly blame patriotism for that.
Can you imagine the horror if someone like Tony Blair was personally in charge of the military?
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
- US Declaration of Independence
(while the USA is by no means perfect, there's hardly a more "perfect" and succinct expression of human rights than that)
What if it were specific and stated "all property owning white males are created equal", which is what it practically meant at the time? Specifics were deliberately left out .. it is just an outline of what we should aim for .. Here is what Lincoln had to say regarding this:
I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal — equal in "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere. -Abraham Lincoln
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
Also worth noting that we don't have a Royal Army:
"Our Army is not called the Royal Army (unlike the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force) because, after a historic struggle between Parliament and monarchy, the British Army has always been answerable to Parliament and the British people. If you live in Britain today, the actions of the British Army have affected the culture, traditions, government and laws of the society you live in, and, on a global scale, are continuing to do so today."
Which I take as a reference to Parliaments New Model Army that won the English Civil War against the monarch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Model_Army
Having said that, Army officers that I have known tend (in private at least) to be somewhat skeptical about politicians of all parties and very clear that their ultimate allegiance is to the Monarch rather than the PM - given that PMs we've had in the last 15 years or so I'm rather glad of this.
Even the "pledge of allegiance" is to "the flag", "the republic for which it stands" etc.
So, no, you don't need an antiquated buffoonish taxpayer subsidized family to swear allegiance to in order to avoid politicization.
All something of a faff and taken as seriously as it sounds! I understand that in some nations, it's taken quite seriously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_King...
> Historically, "No Act of Parliament can be unconstitutional, for the law of the land knows not the word or the idea."[3] Since the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the bedrock of the British constitution has traditionally been the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, according to which the statutes passed by Parliament are the UK's supreme and final source of law.[4] It follows that Parliament can change the constitution simply by passing new Acts of Parliament.
So, basically no, it doesn't have a constitution analogous to the US Constitution.
I very much doubt the conduct "small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory" the last 20+ years. When was the article written?
Now, not 20 years ago, if you want to be rich(or do anything by the way) there you need to be a member of the communist party.
And yes, it may surprise you but in communist party they discuss and study communism theory.
The "openness" is a survival strategy for them, a release valve if you wish. No way they could have survived that long without it.
Yes, the CCP members believe in Marxism as much as the members of Church of England believe in God, according to my personal speculations.
That I know.
That they really study "communist theory" is what I doubt.
> To mitigate the destabilizing effects of the PLA’s strategy, the U.S. and its allies should try harder to maintain their current (if eroding) leads in military hardware. But more importantly, they must continue investing in the training that makes them true professionals. While manpower numbers are likely to come down in the years ahead due to defense budget cuts, regional democracies will have less to fear from China’s weak but dangerous military if their axes stay sharp.
Overall I'm not sure who this author is arguing with. It reads like pure strawman stuff.
[1] http://www.airforcemag.com/AircraftAccidentReports/Documents... page 13
Every army has political indoctrination - it's how you motivate people to put their lives on the line for your goals.
So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy.
It's basically saying "I will be an effective soldier for America". It's just one of many things working together to that end.
Often ANG pilots are even better than the full-timers because they tend to be commercial pilots that joined the Air Force part-time because flying an F22 is the pilot equivalent of driving a Ferrari. These commercial pilots get thousands of hours per year of flying, which is often much more than a full-time Airman would get.
That being said, I agree that some of the author's arguments were very weak. For example, the suggestion that hosting morale boosting activities in the middle of a training exercise is somehow a sign of mission-failure. With the possible exception of North Korea, everyone does that. Hell, there was even a group of terrorists that played soccer daily inside a hostage-filled building surrounded by teams of special forces and law enforcement that wanted to kill them.
It often goes the other way. Becoming a commercial airline pilot requires many hours in the cockpit. A great way to accomplish that is to become a USAF pilot. Your flight training is paid for (in fact, you get a salary to attend). You have a commitment (if you did ROTC it works out to 7-10 years total, flight training takes up the first part of that). Then you can get out, join the guard or reserve and work full-time for 6 figures, and part-time to earn a second retirement (a modest retirement, but gov't service is one of the few remaining sources for pensions).
EDIT: Also, a huge difference between heavies (commercial aircraft, cargo aircraft, refuelers, bombers) and fighters. They handle very differently, and pilots confusing the performance of one for the other can cause serious problems.
The handling characteristics can vary wildly, but I'm sure most pilots know that up front. My father's crew flew P3's, which is more closer to a civilian plane than a fighter jet, but there was still probably a pretty big difference.
Well, that's a bit of an anachronism, as SAC hasn't existed since 1992.
China is investing in sophisticated information attacks to steal military and industry capabilities, disable infrastructure and remove a communications advantage from an invader.
Their heavy submarine focus threatens to obliterate trade routes and defend their own, causing others to hesitate to attack or suffer economic devastation. And their precision missiles are a described as a pocket of excellence within the army.
They can use their missiles to destroy military satellites, taking away advantages like communication and GPS. On the ground, sending missiles directly into concentrated C&C centres like air craft carriers, command posts, etc can turn the enemy into a semi-organised mob. With the enemy taken down a notch or two, suddenly China's moderately trained but extremely numerous ground forces can start to look fairly intimidating.
They mention horses for surveying as barbaric compared to survey helicopters, but what a great asset horses would be when both sides have used their precision missiles to take out all of the supporting infrastructure. No maintenance or fuel supply line needed, they even double as their own horse manufacturing line.
Whether these approaches are enough to defend or attack, who knows, but the strategy is an excellent and efficient one that shouldn't be underestimated. You can't just look at what forces they have, but what relevant effects they can achieve with those forces.
Think about what you're saying for a second. It takes years and plenty of manpower and supplies to raise a horse for riding. Riding horses most definitely do not self replicate in any useful fashion or time-frame.
Horses are in no way useful, at scale, in modern warfare. They require far more training, manpower, and time per-mile-covered than a motorized vehicle. If both sides have obliterated their respective infrastructures to the point that they rely on horses, each would have long since lost the capability to wage a modern war.
It is not an excellent or efficient strategy. It's bad. It relies on cells operating independently, which is massively inefficient, and it relies on those cells being armed with whatever they can scrounge; a professionally trained and equipped armed force is far more efficient and far more effective.
And in 1992, US marines marched into Los Angeles because domestic groups wanted democratic rights, like not being beaten by police officers once down on the ground.
As far as political loyalty in the army for communist countries - Stalin purged his army of generals whose loyalty was suspect prior to World War II. Hitler did not. Stalin won the war, and Hitler's high command tried to kill him.
He proceeded to wage the war with an incompetence only equaled, and ultimately exceeded by Hitler. The cost in lives was appalling. Stalin did not win. Hitler lost.
You can spin this many ways.
I've no idea where the author gets the idea that Taiwan's beaches are the world's most inhospitable. China has continually increased it's stockade of short range missiles located along the coast by the Taiwan Strait. Their strategy most likely would be to decapitate the command and control structure and probably much of the military hardware along with power generation and infrastructure in Taiwan first. It would be a relatively relaxed "invasion" across the Taiwan Strait after that - assuming no retaliation or retribution from the US or Japan first.
I've been working in Romania a while. The takeover here by Soviet after WWII wasn't ... nice. E.g. all grown people with German ancestry were sent to Siberia for at least years (lots of people in Transylvania). And so on.
tl;dr: One way to win someone's heart is by using a knife.
By year 1950 about 253,000 Rumäniendeutsche were expelled and 421,846 remained in Romania.[citation needed] By year 2011 about 36,000 remained as the result of mass migration to Germany. [4]
And for people involved in SS crimes - what do you think we should have done to them - sent them to St Tropez instead?
"The Red Army occupation lead to the deportation to Siberia of more than 200,000 ethnic Germans of Romania (around 75,000 Transylvanian Saxons), Hungary and Yugoslavia. Most of them died in prison camps."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_settlements_in_the_Sovie...
The Saxons in particular had lived many hundreds of years in Transylvania. (Or do you just approve of sending civilians to bad deaths, because of their ancestry?)
Oh pleaseeee!
The Chinese plan to invade Taiwan is political theater designed to reinforce their "One China" policy.
I'm sure it's the PLA's "top operation planning priority" in the sense that it's important they are seen to be planning in.
But in reality, the real priorities are these:
1) Gaining control of the oil and gas fields in the South China Sea
2) Deal with any internal unrest
3) What the f--k to do if conflict breaks out on the Korean peninsula
4) Ensuring energy supply by keeping sea lanes open to the Persian Gulf, and attempting to build, protect and control as many possible pipelines into China as possible.
Taiwan isn't even a real enemy. The trade ties between Taiwan and the mainland are almost as strong as between Hong Kong and the mainland.
Here's a prediction: The US will invade Cuba before China invades Taiwan.
weak, yet dangerous.
smart, yet uninnovative.
studious, yet aggressive.
ubiquitous, yet surreptitious.
industrious, yet backwards.
cultured, yet barbaric.
coy, yet brave.
did i miss any?
If they consider (or can rationalize) a territory to be rightfully part of China, then they will be inclined to be warlike. Right now, the presence of a large reserve of gas and oil in their area of influence, combined with increasing energy requirements in order to industrialize does give them a motive for war.
The land between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers is relatively flat, making it easier for the Han to unite. When the grand canal was built, the economies of scale of trade made the Tang prosperous.
> Historically, they have not shown much inclination to capture foreign territory and colonize it (even when they could have done so easily)
I don't know if they could have captured foreign territory easily. The hilly southern areas weren't always part of China, but they took it over when they were able. China's surrounded by forests to the southwest, mountains to the west, deserts to the north, and ocean to the east and south, all hard barriers to penetrate. It's easier for nomadic cavalry from the desert to come down and raid, they often did and even ruled China for 100 yrs.
The Chinese then built a navy and probably would have taken over various ports along the coast from Vietnam to Tanzania, but the Ming leaders were so afraid the Mongolians (or similar) would re-invade, they closed down the entire navy and diverted all military resources to securing the northern border, building the Forbidden City and Great Wall.
Like all governments, if they can take over more land, they will.
Interest rates would likely rise from their current close-to-historic-lows, but that's nothing that would scare the U.S. from defending one of its closest and most important strategic allies.
I'm really curious how you get from "China owns 8% of U.S. government debt" to "The U.S. would have to pause before defending Japan against Chinese territorial aggression."
Japan, by the way, owns 7% of U.S. debt.
I don't think there's any evidence that U.S. strategic planners consider the economic impact of defending the interests of our allies (particularly one as critical as Japan) as more significant than a third or fourth order effect.
And as I alluded to: If China's 8% is so influential on our strategic actions, why isn't Japan's 7% almost equally so? It's not as if the Japanese government couldn't pick up the slack if China started reducing its position in T-bills. There's likely no reason for them to, because unlike you, I don't believe foreign bond holdings represent any kind of serious lever in international relations.
China's military is optimized for maintaining internal stability and national unity. A civil war is the worst case scenario for China's leadership. You don't need a deep water navy, or a massive air force to achieve this goal. You need a massive tier-2 riot police force with some heavy hardware to augment when things really get out of control.
Along with almost no practical combat experience beyond internal stability operations, the PLA is simply not optimized for engagements outside of the national borders. There's pitifully few deployable logistics units.
However, on the few times China has chosen to mobilize against neighbors, the PLA has shown an ability to move truly unbelievable number of soldiers moderate distances away from the border.
There's also some debate if the PLA acquitted themselves better during the Korean War than during the later Sino-Vietnamese war. I think there's something to that, the end of the Chinese Civil War wasn't all that long before that, and it's likely that veterans of that conflict were in field command positions during the Korean War, but were not in the Sino-Vietnamese war. The outcome of the Sino-Indian war (1962) also probably falls at the career end of the same veteran commanders. In fact, China was at it's most muscular directly following the end of the Civil war (Tibet, Korea, India all between 1950 and 1962). The Soviet border conflict and the Sino-Vietnamese war, which were almost a decade later were not great victories for the PLA.
If that trend is true, the modern non-combat honed PLA may be lacking in critical modern battlefield experience. But it doesn't take a terribly long time for a military to gain that experience and capture it for a few years. Any conflict with the PLA, even if it started poorly for the PLA, would likely turn around not long after.
A friend of mine says that China is historically does not psychologically act in an outwardly facing expansionist way. It simply looks inward to admire itself, and sometimes to get a better view of the Middle Kingdom, steps backwards a few steps into somebody else's territory.
What remains to be seen, is if China's new economic policy creates a golden period of internal stability, if that gives military planners more time to regear and reoptimize the PLA for external conflicts rather than internal peace keeping. Right now, it's too distracted by domestic issues to really do this whole heartedly. But with a massive industrial capacity, I would predict that if such a shift were to occur, the world would be blindsided with how quickly that shift would happen.
Not to be outdone by the conventional army, China’s powerful strategic rocket troops, the Second Artillery Force, still uses cavalry units to patrol its sprawling missile bases deep within China’s vast interior.
Is there any evidence apart from some staged pictures of some event that this is actually true?
the Air Force continues to use a 1950s Soviet designed airframe, the Tupolev Tu-16, as a bomber (its original intended mission), a battlefield reconnaissance aircraft, an electronic warfare aircraft, a target spotting aircraft, and an aerial refueling tanker. Likewise, the PLA uses the Soviet designed Antonov An-12 military cargo aircraft for ELINT (electronic intelligence) missions, ASW (anti-submarine warfare) missions, geological survey missions, and airborne early warning missions. It also has an An-12 variant specially modified for transporting livestock, allowing sheep and goats access to remote seasonal pastures.
Interestingly, the C-130 is still in use by US forces for most of the uses listed above. It first flew in 1954[3]. The B-52 remains the primary US bomber. It first flew in 1952[4].
Take the PLA’s lack of combat experience, for example. A few minor border scraps aside, the PLA hasn’t seen real combat since the Korean War. This appears to be a major factor leading it to act so brazenly in the East and South China Seas.
The more aggressive Chinese position in the South China Sea is possibly the most important strategic development in the last 5 years (and of course it has pretty much been ignored by most media). Saying it is caused by PLA leadership while ignoring the HUGE OIL AND GAS RESERVES the area has is a pretty major oversight (One of the Chinese leadership's biggest concerns is how dependant it is on overseas sources of energy, and how easily those sources could be cut off. A source of oil and gas in Chinese controlled waters is something they see as a major goal, and they may well be willing to fight for it).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War#Ceasefire
My point is that war doesn't show a strength of Chinese army as much as it shows the gigantic fail on the Indian side.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War#Events_leading_...
I'm confused what you mean about "blatant abuse of Indian trust." It throws pretty much everything else you say into question.
This behaviour is typical for PRC. All they seem to want is new territory for themselves. Even now they dispute about Indian territory and frequently undermine borders by intruding.
Often they blame Nehru for being naïve, whilst at the same time blaming China for betrayal. I don't think those two arguments are very compatible.
In the end it was probably beneficial for India. They modernised their army, which let them defeat (Chinese ally) Pakistan pretty comprehensively.
But anyway, the Chinese military was pretty efficient in this war, which goes against the original article.
As far as the two arguments go, I don't see the incompatibility. Can you share your thoughts about this?
Chinese approach was rather brute force, they just poured a lot of soldiers there, far from efficient.
If it was a "betrayal" then Nehru wasn't naïve (because betrayal implies deliberately misleading). OTOH, if Nehru was naïve, then it wasn't a betrayal (because it was so clear to everyone except Nehru that something was going to happen).
I think the truth is somewhere in between. I haven't studied it the conflict in depth, but it seems to me that China's policy towards the Indian border region changed (at least partially because of Indian actions), and India didn't realize it quickly enough.
As someone obliviously said that Indian Air Force was superior, is true partly. But they are forgetting the batter terrain was the himalayas. Unless you are flying over, its suicidal to even fly in Himalayas.
In short, A axe can't do a toothpick's job. Thus, nor Navy/Air Force was deployed.
Also, China/India are both relatively young sovereign nations.. 1962 was barely 10 years into independance for both ravaged nations. Economically/Politically it was a bad choice to continue it.
Production was performed by the plant at Xian, with at least 150 built into the 1990s. China is estimated to currently operate around 120 of the aircraft. The latest version is the cruise missile-carrying H-6K.[1]
They aren't exactly the most advanced plane in the world, but they don't need to be. It is disingenuous of the author to make it sound like the Chinese are doing anything dramatically different to what other nations do.
So the grand-parent's comparison is entirely valid. Both the USAF and PLA use aircraft in primary roles that were designed half a century ago. And, frankly, there isn't anything wrong with that in either case. Physics hasn't changed in 50 years.
For instance, I'm a horrible chess player, and I even tell my opponents that, but yet, they often take a much longer time to play because my moves are so unpredictable it really throws them off their own game (also---I'm regarded as a smart fellow, and I wouldn't make obviously stupid moves, so when I do, my opponent wastes time trying to figure out what they're missing).
Family members, family friends and friends help get preferential placement and position.
To a large extent it's more about enforcing CCP control of the country and people than protecting it from invasion or invading.
In a place like China, you need to spend more money protecting yourself from Chinese people than from outsiders.
Mmmmmmmmm, sounds like Obama shared a story about his programmer life. He had completed a successful side project -- a health care website, for example. And he proudly mentioned that his project is written in VB6!!!
I have no military experience, but with access to Chinese sources, I feel justified to point out some obvious errors:
> Not to be outdone by the conventional army, China’s powerful strategic rocket troops, the Second Artillery Force, still uses cavalry units to patrol its sprawling missile bases deep within China’s vast interior. Why? Because it doesn’t have any helicopters.
I believe all calvary troops, except a few symbolic ones, are canceled during the "Million Disarmament" in the middle 1980s. The linked gallery should be showing a group of guards of honor or simple soldiers in recreation. They are even equipped with swords; if it's fair to claim that the Second Artillery still use horses for patrolling, it's fair to say they use swords for combat too, which is absurd.
China produces helicopters, for civil or military uses. For instance, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAIC_Z-10. They were used extensively during the 2008 Sichuan earthquakes.
> For that reason, the PLA has to engage in constant “political work” at the expense of training for combat. This means that 30 to 40 percent of an officer’s career (or roughly 15 hours per 40-hour work week) is wasted studying CCP propaganda, singing patriotic songs, and conducting small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory. And when PLA officers do train, it is almost always a cautious affair that rarely involves risky (i.e., realistic) training scenarios.
This is exaggerating too much. According to the PLA Political Work Regulation (http://www.ljxw.gov.cn/news_detail-3993.html), political work are recommended to be organized "weekly and lasting a half-day", and required to be "no less than twice per month". That is 10% or 5% of working hours. Well, some army officers may be over-enthusiastic about political work and organize such activities very frequently, but that definitely would make him unpopular...
> Yet none of this should be comforting to China’s potential military adversaries. It is precisely China’s military weakness that makes it so dangerous. Take the PLA’s lack of combat experience, for example. A few minor border scraps aside, the PLA hasn’t seen real combat since the Korean War.
Some have already mentioned the Sino-Indian war. There has also been Sino-Vietnamese war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War).
The world is relatively peaceful today, and the troops of most big nations have not fighted big wars for many decades. Except for USA which actively provokes wars.
> The Chinese military is dangerous in another way as well. Recognizing that it will never be able to compete with the U.S. and its allies using traditional methods of war fighting, the PLA has turned to unconventional “asymmetric” first-strike weapons and capabilities to make up for its lack of conventional firepower, professionalism and experience.
From a purely cultural POV, western and Chinese militarists may have vastly different ideas of "traditional methods of war fighting". Saying that the (supposed) enemy will not obeys the "traditional rules" sounds like an excuse of not actually trying to understand them.
In part, perhaps, to avoid accusations that we've forgotten how to fight.