Why the Chinese military is only a paper dragon

[Europa]

Why the Chinese military is only a paper dragon - The Week

 

[Zarvan]

Why the Chinese military is only a paper dragon - The Week

Yes the paper dragon who scares the hell out off India and Japan and many more and now USA is more afraid off China than ever before

 

[+4vsgorillas-Apebane]

Obscure and shonky source written by a Japanese?

You need to try harder my sour friend.

 

[TheMatador]

Museum pieces

(China Photos/Getty Images)

Despite a growing defense budget, China's arsenals still overflow with outdated equipment. The PLA possesses 7,580 main battle tanks — more than the U.S. Army. But only 450 of those tanks — the Type 98As and Type 99s — are anywhere near modern, with 125-millimeter guns, composite armor, modern suspension, and advanced fire control systems.

Nice choice of random photo from the internet using search for "PLA" by moron reporters. That vehicle really looks like a museum piece

 

[Ragnar]

War is Boring.. And the article is full of holes. SCO members are wrong, China's land border with Afghanistan is negligible, that with N.Korea and Pakistan is very small. Maybe there are many more errors.

 

[55100864]

yes，paper dragon，dose this pic make u feel better?

 

[TheMatador]

Unknown unknowns

(Guang Niu/Getty Images)

One of the most visible signs of China's military rise is all the new, locally-designed and -produced hardware. Beijing is building new ships, aircraft, drones and tanks that, on the outside, appear to be matches for Western weapons. But we know very little about China's homemade weaponry. Specifically, we don't know if any of it really works.

The article comes with a photo of Chinese military helicopter flying and the text asks if it really works

 

[KalaGhoda]

Yes the paper dragon who scares the hell out off India and Japan and many more and now USA is more afraid off China than ever before

ummm...no it doesn't.

 

[IsaacNewton]

Chinese 052c 052d 054a are pretty good ships.

 

[gambit]

Stop focusing on the hardware, but on this section...

Why the Chinese military is only a paper dragon - The Week

Corruption is a huge and largely invisible problem for the PLA. Officials sell government property for their own profit. Contractors charge inflated fees for substandard work. Cronyism results in promotions for unqualified personnel.

For years, the PLA generated extra income — and food staples — by farming and raising its own livestock. As China's economy took off, these survival efforts evolved into businesses. To farming and ranching, the PLA added hotels, theaters, and bars — the profits from which as often as not ended up in top officers' pockets.

In 1998, the Chinese Communist Party ordered the PLA to cut ties with commercial enterprises in order to improve military readiness. An infantry unit didn't need to raise its own pork anymore — the defense budget could accommodate soldiers' food needs. Units could get on with the business of soldiering.

But instead of ending them, corrupt military leaders simply obscured their profit ventures.

The business of illegally selling military license plates to wealthy civilians has been a particularly lucrative one. Plate bearers — who are often civilians with only tangential connections to the PLA — mount red lights and sirens on their cars to push through regular street traffic. Holders are often entitled to free gasoline.

The situation got so bad that in 2013, the PLA banned expensive imports — from Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche, and Bentley — from having military license plates.

Beijing has occasionally cracked down on corrupt officers. In 2007, a judge handed down a suspended death sentence to Vice Adm. Wang Shouye for embezzling $25 million in PLA funds.

As deputy director of the PLA's General Logistics Department between 1997 and 2001, Wang was in a position to approve new military housing. The government accused Wang of receiving kickbacks from contractors.

Police arrested Wang in 2006 after the admiral refused blackmail demands from one of his many mistresses. Investigators found more than $8 million dollars stashed in microwave ovens and refrigerators in Wang's homes in Beijing and Nanjing and another $2.5 million in a washing machine. There was evidence of an additional $8 million in pilfered funds in Wang's bank accounts.

In March, police detained Xu Caihou, a retired general and former member of the powerful Central Military Commission, on allegations he made millions of dollars selling military ranks. Xu was in charge of high-level army promotions from 2004 to 2013.

We don't know exactly how much money Xu made. However, the general's subordinate Gu Junshan — who is also in custody and under investigation — gave Xu's daughter a debit card worth $3.2 million as a wedding gift.

Gu reportedly sold "hundreds" of military ranks. "If a senior colonel [not in line for promotion] wanted to become a major general, he had to pay up to $4.8 million," a source told Reuters.

That's a lot of money. In most professional militaries, such bribes wouldn't be worth it. But in the PLA, a payoff like that is an investment. The higher an officer's rank, the greater the opportunities for self-enrichment.

Daniel Hartnett, a China analyst at CNA Corporation, told War Is Boring that corruption could damage the PLA's military capabilities, not the least by "hinder[ing] the PLA's ability to develop its officer corps."

"If officers are purchasing promotions, as recent allegations have claimed, it could mean that those who should be promoted due to merit might not be. And those that arebeing promoted, shouldn't necessarily be," Hartnett said.

Graft could hurt the PLA in other ways, Hartnett explained. "Although PLA procurement processes are often a black box, it'd be a plausible conclusion that some — maybe even many — procurement decisions are not necessarily made with the PLA's best interests in mind. Purchase this item, and receive a kickback, even if that item is sub-quality or not necessarily need."

Corruption could also open a rift between the Chinese people and the PLA. "If the military is seen as a corrupt institution, as it was during the early 1980s in China, overall support for the PLA could be undermined," Hartnett said. "This would go heavily against the military's narrative that it is the keeper of [Chinese] honor and integrity that it has worked so hard to develop over the past two-plus decades."

Morale in the PLA officer corps has tanked in the wake of the Gu Junshan scandal, According to Reuters. "Many fear punishment. Those who are able but passed over for promotion are disgruntled."

Since assuming office in 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping has made the news several times urging the PLA to "prepare for combat." That might sound bellicose, but in light of the PLA's corruption problem, Xi could be telling officers to stop making money and just do their jobs.

"No country can defeat China," a leading PLA commissar was quoted as saying in Foreign Policy. "Only our own corruption can destroy us and cause our armed forces to be defeated without fighting."

Are these true or not ?

These behaviors are not signs of a truly professional military. This is not about individual soldiers getting drunk on a weekend. Individual misconduct can and are usually remedied by local commanders with existing military laws. We are talking about the corruption of the honor and integrity of ranks -- earned ranks -- by military leaders in selling them. This undermines the foundation of a military. Ranks are supposedly earned by hard work, intelligence, a sense of self respect and honor, patriotism, and fidelity to the greater cause. But now I have to salute and say: "Yes sir. No ma'am." to someone who I and others knew bought his/her rank while we have to work hard to earn what we have ? In combat, I have to obey the orders of a colonel who flunked military education but got his rank because he extorted money from me and my mates to purchase his rank ?

Not one of the Chinese members here have ever served in the military so none of you will ever understand -- deeply -- the significance of how the ranks relates to each other. So you guys go on and boast about the J-20, the advance ships, and the amount of tanks all you want. In combat, these things will be for naught when ordinary PLA troops are under assault and their mid-grade officers are brain addled because they bought their ranks instead of earning them through hard work and proper military education.

 

[500]

Many things are very inaccurate:

The PLA possesses 7,580 main battle tanks — more than the U.S. Army. But only 450 of those tanks — the Type 98As and Type 99s — are anywhere near modern, with 125-millimeter guns, composite armor, modern suspension, and advanced fire control systems.
All of America's roughly 5,000 M-1 tanks are modern.

China has over 500 Type 98/99 + 1800 Type 96 which also have 125-mm gun and composite armor.

USA has only 2,338 active Abrams tanks.

But China's air forces likewise maintain mostly obsolete jets. Of 1,321 fighters, only 502 are modern — 296 variants of the Russian Su-27 and 206 J-10s of an indigenous design. The remaining 819 fighters — mostly J-7s, J-8s and Q-5s — are 1960s designs built in the 1970s. They wouldn't last long in a shooting war.

Actually 571 Su-27 variants and J-10. Also saying "ONLY 502 are modern" is funny, since France has only 243 modern fighters, UK - 102, Germany - 94, Italy - 68... Thus China has more modern fighters than France, UK, Germany and Italy combined!

My estimates are much more accurate

22 top airforces (based on plane quality and quantity). | Page 24
42 top tank fleets based on quality and quantity
38 top air defence fleets based on quality and quantity
25 top submarine fleets based on quality and quantity

 

[Beidou2020]

This PLA 'paper dragon' made a complete and utter mockery of the US military and 13 of its allies in the Korean War when the PLA 'paper dragon' kicked out the US military and its allies out of North Korea

All the wars the US fights are with weak and defenceless countries with no offensive capabilities.

They are too chicken to get into war with Russia or China after the spankings they got in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

 

[dlclong]

“paper tiger”This is the Chairman Mao described the USA，
now，China becomes “paper dragon”

 

[Beidou2020]

“paper tiger”This is the Chairman Mao described the USA，
now，China becomes “paper dragon”

Well the US proved its a paper tiger when they couldn't even defeat the Chinese Volunteer Army in the Korean War

The US despite its massive military budget and its weaponry still got kicked out of North Korea by the Chinese Volunteer Army armed with basic weapons.

 

[AgentOrange]

Kyle Mizokami is the worst type of prostitute posing as a journalist. He's got no integrity because his "stance" on a particular issue is bought and paid for.

For instance, if he's writing for the Diplomat (a well known Japanese funded "China threat" website), he'll hype up the imminent danger of of the PLA and how everyone else in Asia should take heed of this deadly bogeyman. Now, since he's writing for the Week or whatever, the PLA apparently can't fight its way out of a wet paper bag.

I'd say the guy should make up his mind about China's military but he needs to eat and people will pay him to write what they want to hear and to confirm what they already believe. Or in other words, people pay him to mentally masturbate them. And what is someone who engages in that sort of act? A prostitute.