Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

thediplomat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 109 posts

Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

#41

Post by spc476 »

ww520 wrote: post #5

I don't get it. If China's military is as weak and as far behind as the author claims, why is he worrying about China's military threats? It should be a cakewalk to head off any threats from them with our much more advanced capabilities. Why is he advocating to increase the military spending for US and its allies? Aren't our current capabilities so much better and so much ahead of them that they will have no hope of…

It's worrying because they're unpredictable and won't necessarily do the appropriate counter move.

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).

Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

#42

Post by eklavya »

SavvyGuard wrote: post #38
eklavya wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the Sino Indian war is much more a testament to the sheer incompetency and spinelessness of the then prime minister of India. He was caught off guard with the blatant abuse of Indian trust by China. There were no clear directives and because of this reinforcements were too late. The Indian Air Force at that time was vastly superior to what China had but again the fear and incompetence of Nehru got the better of…

According to the linked wikipedia article in the parent comment 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.

Blatant abuse being the hostile behaviour shown by the Chinese just after the "hindi, chini bhai bhai" (Indian and Chinese are brothers.) catch phrase was what every Indian used to say. They attacked India and took away a huge part of Indian land.

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.

Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

#43

Post by EliRivers »

ENGNR wrote: post #18

One of the most important aspects of modern warfare is the asymmetry. It's best to pursue small efforts that can have stupidly large and devastating effect on your opponent. 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 an…

Asymmetric warfare is a way for small numbers of people with little more equipment than what they can carry to fight a professional, modern armed force that's occupying their nation or is very close to their borders; a significant amount of their time is spent scrounging for food and working out where to sleep. Any nation planning to fight a war asymmetrically is not planning to project power beyond its borders, and is effectively hoping that if they're enough of a nuisance (and they don't anger their own population too much doing it) the other side will get tired and go home.

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.

Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

#44

Post by matthewrudy »

coldtea wrote: post #27
r0h1n wrote: post #7

This is the most interesting part, for me: > 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 off…

> > 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. I very much doubt the conduct "small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory"…

A friend is a deputy of her local party group. They still do monthly meetings of this type; discussing the progress of the five year plan, the teachings of mao, all this stuff you associate with the Cultural Revolution. But really everyone just sleeps through that, and goes along for the social activities and networking.

Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

#45

Post by EliRivers »

astkaasa wrote: post #21

HN readers discuss some military issue. 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!!!

You might be surprised how many HNers have military experience.

Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

#46

Post by matthewrudy »

bhrgunatha wrote: post #30

> Take a Taiwan invasion scenario, which is the PLA’s top operational planning priority. While much hand-wringing has been done in recent years about the shifting military balance in the Taiwan Strait, so far no one has been able to explain how any invading PLA force would be able to cross over 100 nautical miles of exceedingly rough water and successfully land on the world’s most inhospitable beaches, let alone capt…

I think the last point is valid, though. Taiwan people are very proud of their independence. I can't imagine how Beijing could approach winning over hearts and minds.

Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

#47

Post by EliRivers »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #16
r0h1n wrote: post #7

This is the most interesting part, for me: > 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 off…

I am given to understand that British soldiers entering the army swear their allegiance to the Queen, not to the constitution nor the population. So?

Just because I find it interesting, the Royal Navy for a very long time didn't do an oath at all (that said, the UK armed forces are charmingly diverse and I bet some of them did!), although non-officer Royal Marines did. I think I heard that non-officer Royal Navy recruits now do, but that was because the army and air force people did and it seemed silly to have the difference, so in the interests of being able to apply one system to all, the Royal Navy non-officer recruits now do, but there was no requirement for everyone already in to go back and do it, so now there's a navy in which everyone with more than X years of service didn't do any oath-swearing, and the new kids did.

All something of a faff and taken as seriously as it sounds! I understand that in some nations, it's taken quite seriously.

Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

#48

Post by mike-cardwell »

coldtea wrote: post #28
argumentum wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly does the UK clinging to a backward tradition justify the Chinese clinging to a backward tradition?

What does exactly make it a "backward tradition"? That you have other ideas about how things should be?

It's backward because it's not representative democracy. It's inherited political power. Even if you don't believe they have real power, it's still offensive to anyone that believes in representative democracy and selecting their leadership. Englishman here.

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.

Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

#49

Post by matthewrudy »

Zuider wrote: post #39
thaumasiotes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has often been wealthy, but has rarely been able to conquer... anywhere. They're not the first, or twentieth, place I would look if I were worrying about foreign aggression.

China conquered China, unifying a large area of territory under one government. Historically, they have not shown much inclination to capture foreign territory and colonize it (even when they could have done so easily). Note that their current, de facto control of large areas of the African continent is a departure from tradition. If they consider (or can rationalize) a territory to be rightfully part of China, then…

I think China is trying to build a nation that can thrive for another 1000 years. They're building great infrastructure and securing natural resources wherever they can. But they're doing it for the Chinese people. Invading foreign lands doesn't make sense in that view. But being patient on the Taiwan issue will pay off. Economics not militarism will likely lead to the reunification.

Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

#50

Post by gaius »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #48
coldtea wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does exactly make it a "backward tradition"? That you have other ideas about how things should be?

It's backward because it's not representative democracy. It's inherited political power. Even if you don't believe they have real power, it's still offensive to anyone that believes in representative democracy and selecting their leadership. Englishman here. 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 abo…

Then to who or what to allegiance be sworn?

Can you imagine the horror if someone like Tony Blair was personally in charge of the military?

Post reply on HN