USA vs. China Ways (6.2)

What about PLA’s Combating Capabilities?

To talk about People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) combatting capabilities, there are three key factors to highlight. First, PLA is from the long China’s military traditions, one essential feature, for example, is it relies more on tactics than weaponry, because their weaponry has always been backward.

Second, PLA has had a lot of influences from the former Soviet and now Russian military strategic thinking, structure, procedure, weaponry, and training methodologies.

Third, since 1979 when the China fought a border war with Vietnam, PLA hasn’t engaged with any major warfare for over 40 years. Its real combat experiences, talent storage, capabilities have declined to the low end.

Just to the contrary, the US military has never stopped fighting here and there. This is because the US has played a “world police” role in many occasions. As mentioned in the last post, while China does have a long border facing 14 different countries to defend and guard, such defenses, however in high tensions sometimes, don’t necessarily become real wars.

Hence China itself knows well, although its weapon systems and equipment have been quickly advancing over these years, lack of real combatting experiences and talents is the “soft rib” of its giant military machine.