China has the largest standing army in the world
The largest navy in the world
But there’s one fatal weakness
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
The Chinese Communist Party’s military is full of bravado. Over the years it has become much
more aggressive. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly told
the People’s Liberation Army to be ready for war.
I mean, sure you don’t want your army to not be ready for war.
But Xi Jinping says it a lot.
Meanwhile, Chinese jets are flying more and more frequently
over Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone.
There’s been a massive buildup of military equipment in the South China Sea.
And China now has the largest navy in the world.
The Chinese Communist Party hopes it can convince the world a fight
against it would be hopeless, so Taiwan may as well surrender.
However, the People’s Liberation Army has a major weakness—their soldiers.
A combination of low morale, inexperience, and poor equipment is hobbling the PLA.
Which is why the Communist Party is terrified of putting it to the test.
So the Chinese Communist Party’s military is not all it's cracked up to be.
One of its biggest Achilles’ heels is low troop morale.
“In China, where people tend to have little respect for soldiers, there is a saying:
‘Good steel does not become nails,’ meaning respectable individuals do not become soldiers.”
That view is even more of a burden for Chinese soldiers
because of the decades-long One Child Policy.
Over 70% of Chinese soldiers are only children.
So if you’re a parent, and your son dies in combat, that’s not just the loss of a child,
it could be the loss of your entire family line.
On top of that, Confucian values still have a strong pull in Chinese society.
Children are expected to take care of their parents in their old age.
So you can understand why Chinese people don’t have much of a stomach for military casualties.
Which is one reason the Chinese Communist Party conceals the real casualty numbers,
like they did during the border clash with India back in June of 2020.
While India said that 20 of their soldiers were killed, the Chinese Communist Party said nothing.
Then 8 months later, the Chinese Communist Party finally admitted four PLA soldiers died.
But that’s probably a drastic undercount. One US intelligence
official estimates there were 20 to 30 deaths China had concealed.
But there’s another problem with an army made mainly of only children—kids
are spoiled. It’s called little emperor syndrome.
And China’s military worries that its only-child recruits are wimps.
Which is one reason the Chinese regime has been leading a push to make boys more manly.
And nothing is as manly as muscular rap videos featuring close-up shots of huge missiles.
Hey yo, PLA
It really looks like they’re using those missiles to compensate for
Low morale.
But if society is calling you wimpy nails, you can see why morale might be low in the PLA.
And that’s certainly backed up by the treatment of Chinese soldiers.
A US Army Private earns over $20,000 a year in basic pay.
They also get a housing and food allowance that almost doubles that amount.
A Chinese recruit makes only $2,600 a year. Even after adjusting for purchasing power,
it’s still only half as much as the basic pay for an American private.
And there’s a much bigger problem—lack of experience.
“The PLA last fought a major conflict nearly 40 years ago,
when a seasoned Vietnamese military demolished a bungled Chinese invasion in 1979.”
According to the Rand Corporation , “The ghost of that defeat still hovers over the PLA.”
“Authorities have largely chosen to ignore an embarrassing conflict
that fits awkwardly with Beijing’s narrative of a peaceful rise, but the official silence
has left many PLA veterans disillusioned about their participation in the war.”
Not only that, but “The few combat veterans who remain in service will all retire within the next
few years, which means the military will soon have no personnel with firsthand combat experience.”
Instead, the PLA relies on military training exercises
to test whether their troops are combat ready.
The PLA does claim to have 2 million active troops, the largest standing army in the world.
But raw numbers alone aren’t enough to win a war.
An analysis of the PLA estimates that about a third of the army is made up of conscripts.
Now you may think of conscripts as people who are forced to join the army.
But it’s not that straightforward.
In practice it’s more like voluntary conscription.
Local governments will have annual “conscription drives” to get people to join the PLA.
“The ratio of conscripts who volunteer to serve
versus those who are forced to join the military is not known.”
But people do volunteer as conscripts. I mentioned earlier that low-ranking Chinese soldiers don’t
get paid much. But for some poorer people, that’s still enough to make it worthwhile.
Conscripts serve two year terms in the PLA. That means about
400,000 people have to join the PLA each year to keep the numbers up.
After two years, the conscripts either leave the PLA or they can volunteer and
become non-commissioned officers if they qualify.
But here’s the weakness with the PLA’s annual conscription cycle.
“Unlike their counterparts in other militaries, as long as the traditional
once-a-year conscription cycle is in effect, conscript-heavy squads, weapons crews,
platoons, and companies will undergo large fluctuations in strength twice a year.”
“In September, 40 to 50 percent of their conscripts are demobilized,
and six months later, a new batch of privates enters the unit. In essence,
small unit leaders must build unit proficiency and cohesion with two
different sets of personnel each year, then repeat the same process every year.”
Now the PLA realizes this is a problem, and there are supposed
to be reforms that solve this problem. But they’re going to take years to implement.
So if a Chinese military conflict happens too soon,
it may not go as well for the PLA as they hope.
And now, I want to give a shoutout to one of our video editors! Anderson, aka Andersaucy.
He isn’t just a video editor. He’s also a rapper.
He worked with a platform called Taiwan Plus to make a fantastic music video
about Taiwan and how it’s thriving despite the threats from the Chinese Communist Party.
It’s great. Check it out, I’ve put the link below.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell, see you next time.