Again true.

This is part of my question raised about PLA. How flexible is it, given both its military history/traditions as well as overall culture.

How rigid are the command hierarchies?

How much is initiative valued or allowed?

It’s interesting that the Wehrmacht promoted initiative and flexibility but failure was met with harsh punishment (as opposed to emphasis on learning why failure was met).

Well, in the formative years of the PLA as an insurgency against the nationalists, inidivdual and squad initiative was certainly promoted, but obviously that was half a century ago, and guerilla warfare.

It’d be interesting to read the Taiwanese ones.

They vary in quality.

I especially remember when J-20 first came out and so many taiwanese analysts are ardent it was a fabrication for weeks if not months.

So, what can we agree on, in terms of PLA capability due to human elements?

PLA has shown debatable military effectiveness in its few conflicts during the last 30 years.
PLA have not engaged in large scale military operations in real war scenarios in last 30 years.
PLA has been exposed to large scale changes, or have at least seriously looked at their own deficiencies since the early 90s after experiences with vietnam, watching western operations, third taiwan strait crisis, etc.

What we don’t know:
How effective PLA performs in their domestic and few international exercises and how complex and comprehensive they are.
The military-social culture among the troops within their own services.
And of course, how competently they’ve integrated themselves with their new, modern equipment, both indigenous and imported.

Everything else, like how they would perform under combat, etc, are all questions we won’t know until a conflict actually occurs, so I consider them somewhat moot.

Also ignore calous feeding of soldiers into the grinder with little or no equipment and often using massed bayonet charges I guess to people such as yourself, victory is to be obtained at any cost. All while sitting at your computer in middle class luxury. But then what’s a few hundred thousand dead and wounded peasants.

Careful, if you’re making a reference to human wave tactics there’s a big can of worms to be opened, and PVA at least didn’t quite use those tactics during the korean war, although they were definitely ill equipped with far less heavy support than UN opfor.

Also point of this thread is that the PLA is an unknown quantity, but whose previous incarnation was based on some shoddy principles (e.g. look at that great pyrrhic victory in Vietnam) and an extremely outdated doctrine and politicised military culture.

Whether anything has changed is anyone’s guess

I think you’re being a little disingenuous here, because the war against vietnam definitely opened PLA’s eyes, along with western exploits in ME, balkans, not to mention PLA’s flirting with war during the third taiwan strait crisis, and dramatic change has definitely happened in organization, realistic training, equipment, doctrine.
How effective the changes are in a conflict, and how effective it can be implemented is another matter, but if there is one common, persistent theme across both western and domestic assessments of capability, is that PLA are aware of their deficiencies and can look critically at themselves.

However rumblings of PLAAF Flankers getting smashed in exercises against F-4E Phantoms or even the best PLA batallion commanders being unable to perform satisfactorily in combined arms don’t bode well for time being.

There is a certain degree of reporting bias (as more often than not, failures would be reported more than success), but I agree that we don’t have a clear picture as to how well PLA do perform.

(Wrt to the whole antonlian eagle thing, I want to point out how PLAAF inhibition could definitely have played a role in their supposed poor performance, as turkey in 2010 was definitely not as close an ally as say, pakistan, who PLAAF may be more willing to open up to. And that the flankers PLAAF sent were SKs or J-11As, etc. I could just as easily point out to the recent PLAAF-PAF exercise, regarding how PLAAF J-7s convincingly beat PAF J-7s in close combat, etc)

In the end it’s all guesswork because the PRC is a dictatorship that doesn’t like discussing it’s true military capabilities.

… Really?
If yo’ure really pointing out form of government as a causal factor for military transparency I think you’re way off mark.

They don’t do exercises with other countries very often and they are usually non-combat orientated. (e.g. SAR).

There is no combat experience against which they can be judged.

We don’t get any publications in English relating to actual Chinese exercises or performance. These might be available in Chinese. I’m not sure if Chinese military journals are published or more likely if they’re available to Chinese public.

I don’t disagree with this.

This is indeed the question.

And it’s a question that we have no data for and even no real way of measuring .

We get the occasional anecdote from a peace mission exercise or we can try and extrapolate how often PLAAF may operate and use various types of munitions, how many hours they fly, etc, by watching intently and pilfering rumours from big shrimps, that’s about it.

(Again, there are more competent PLA watchers over on CDF that may clarify these muddied waters)

You’ll find all these in the creation and training of the Olympic squads. If you really want to take these things into consideration then simply looking at the Olympic standings will tell you relative place of the nations and their militaries. The top 10 especially the top five match the world’s great power standings exactly. Now of course, you’ll dismiss this because racially the second ranked nation doesn’t conform to your views on this “human factor.”

Well, organising an Olympic sports is not quite a fair example to extrapolate how well one nations entire military or Air Force can operate…

No it doesn’t belong here. It doesn’t even belong in philosophy discussion thread. It’s race-baiting post full of stereotypes and racial innuendos where the poster shouts down any difference in opinions by calling you a nationalist.

Well I think his question is a valid one, because human effectiveness will always depend on culture, history, etc, the problem is whether can can sift out the incorrect stereotypes to gain a clearer picture from what little we know.

Still it probably isn’t the right question for an aviation forum, and few posters here are chinese military historians let alone even knowledgeable PLA watchers, so his question won’t receive a very comprehensive answer

China’s forces are largely conscript (bare in mind so are Taiwanese and South Korean forces).

I just want to interject and say that’s not true — you did see what I posted a page back, right?
The PLA enforces no conscription, even though there technically is one, and virtually all personnel are volunteers.

That said, I think socioeconomic status before entering service is also important, and we need to know the background of PLA’s volunteers.
PLA are vigorously improving their volunteer pool though, and trying to make a military career more attractive to potential recruits. By 2025 this should definitely start to bear fruit.

Traditionally professional armies perform better than conscripts. Conscripts serve for limited time, hence they are usually not as effective as professional soldiers.

The reason is simple – by the time a conscript is fully trained, they are leaving the service.

Obviously this affects ground services more than naval or air forces who have more professionals.

One thing I did find out is that PLA’s professional NCO corps were only formed in 1999. NCOs are generally conscripts who volunteer for extra duty after period of conscription ends (unlike poor Soviet system where NCOs were just conscripts with extra training).

Attempts are being made to make NCO corp more capable.

I don’t disagree with any of this. Unfortunately we have little knowledge regarding average PLA duty length, how well they’re trained in what military regions, etc, etc.

Also PLA still has a top heavy command structure with 33% of all personnel being officers, compared to only 15% in US. This obviously has an impact on operational command and control.

Hmm, source?

Just saying, PLA’s gone through massive structural changes in last few decades, that statistic may be very old

The comments on ASW are very interesting. This makes Chinese SSNs a greater threat to carrier groups than anti-shipping ballistic missiles (still not sold on that one even if the Americans had been the ones to claim they’ve invented them).

PLAN SSNs are currently not as effective as PLAN SSKs and surface ship/helicopter ASW, I think, simply because PLAN SSNs are indeed at least a generation behind the latest USN SSNs. 091 had a terrible reactor, 091B somewhat rectified this and is supposedly not completely cr*p (that said, given PRC managed to develop even a loud SSN in their time period is a hell of an achievement). 093 has been estimated to be anywhere between victor iii and early LA level of quietness, and there are rumours of 093Bs being launched in last few years, but no one still knows how effective they are.

Remember, 093 was first seriously designed in the chinese industrial base of the early 90s — and I think precision and heavy industries are very important to trying to guess how effective an SSN design of the time may be (remember the whole USSR, japanese milling equipment controversy? It was probably blown out of proportion, but still, my statement regarding industrial prowess remains).
093B may have held some of the fruits of industrial growth of the late 90s, early 2000s, but 095 (the “fourth generation” nuke sub), should be able to match the seawolf/virginia of late cold war US shipbuilding and precision industries, I think.

In effect, I personally will only have faith in PLAN SSNs against USN and other modern navies until a couple of 095s are in service. In the PLAN submarine orbat, their SSKs are far more lethal than SSNs I think.

As for AShBM, some US military organs have claimed it’s real, some have dismissed it as vapourware, but from what I’ve read over the years I would be very surprised if it doesn’t currently exist in some form of IOC. That, or the PLA have played a very excellent game of deception, hitting just the right amount of convincing versus ambiguity.

Again, I’m not discounting the fact that many of the defenders would get away, but my point isn’t that the defenders would get wiped out, but that they would lose control over their areas. I’m primarily talking about holding territory. To go back to an earlier point, I’m saying the PLA would be able to successfully gain control of Taipei, which is why I imagine any resistance by the ROCAF to become insurgent.

Just so there aren’t any misunderstandings later, ROCAF = ROC air force, I think you used ROCAF as a stand in for “ROC military”.