Mollick.R wrote:@RaviB jee Thanks a lot & congrats for those two excellent posts on china.
RaviB wrote:Part 2 and conclusion of previous post
How China sees itself
This might make me sound like a Pakistani, but the Chinese have nothing to even remotely match the Indian soldier's spirit. I just tried to think of how many of my Chinese acquaintances might be willing to die for their country and I honestly can't think of a single one. In case of India obviously I have family, friends, neighbors, one doesn't need more than 5 seconds to think of 10 people. The Chinese spirit comes from Han superiority and fear of their officers, especially the political officers. This means they are ripe for desertion, and if there are non-Han soldiers they can probably be used to create disorder within their armies. The han superiority also makes them afraid of barbarians. They are always scared by people with heavy beards and scary mustaches.
This highlighted part is contradictory to historical facts and my (basic) understandings about China.
As recent as in China Vietnam conflict during year 1979, external studies estimate around 26,000 PLA killed in action.
I'm not bringing Korea , Russia or Indo China war , Chinese loss figures.
So basically, we are saying that without a spirit for dying for motherland & just because of "Han superiority and fear of their officers, especially the political officers" they were able to get young bloods & manage war casualties ???
Your further comments will definitely help us.
PS:- Standing at 2020 I'm aware about about single child
"little emperors" phenomena and its social /military effects on PLA. That a well written and documented part for several years.
I'm speaking of the current situation and my acquaintances are mostly from the more affluent and educated section. And obviously the current generations are mostly single children. In the countryside more children were allowed, but even there families were usually only allowed to have one son. A family losing their son would be a very big deal. In India the father of one of our soldiers said he was proud of his son's sacrifice and his younger son was waiting to join the IA. In China, there
is no younger son and two families lost their spoilt and beloved child. Of course, there is also no recognition from the PLA, so not even the consolation of being honoured.
In the Korean war Chairman Mao's own son died (of dysentry, but still). At the time of the Vietnam war, China was
poor and
communist. So there was for one desperation due to which people joined, also conscription but they were also very committed to communist ideology. In fact they regularly had to attend classes on communism and memorise Chairman Mao's quotation. A lot of the losses (more than 4 times that of Vietnamese forces) were possibly also due to poor tactics like human wave attacks and not necessarily bravery.
Today, the CPC doesn't actually command loyalty. People become soldiers because those from the countryside might find it more lucrative than working in a factory in Guangzhou. Han chauvinism/nationalism may be a sufficient motivation but I'm not sure. Then the fact that they are fighting in Tibet, it is difficult to overstate the contempt the Han have for Tibetans and Tibet. In India soldiers are fighting to protect their motherland, in China soldiers would think of this as dying to protect penguins in Antarctica.
It's one thing to look cool on a Global Times video and another to tie a broken arm with a belt and jump into a machine gun nest. I'm sure they have their ways of building up morale but from the little we know in recent times, the fighting spirit is missing. For instance, in the Sudan peacekeeping fiasco, they were making videos but when the militia fired at them, they abandoned post and also
abandoned their weapons. And did not respond to the calls for help of foreign aid workers. Indian peacekeepers had to take care of the entire situation the next day.
The incident happened in 2016 and shows that they aren't too concerned with the their izzat.
This might have been due to a number of factors including failure of command but at least gives a pointer into how they might respond. It is not sufficient to rely on when starting a war, but is useful to keep in mind. This impression also fits with the
reports we had from our soldiers.