If I’m a bigot, then you’re a sad deluded nationalist with delusions of nationalistic grandeur who references wars fought 60 years ago but ignores those fought a mere 30 years ago.
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.
Oh and the Vietnamese stalled China’s advance in 1979 without even committing their regular divisions or any forces committed to Cambodia.
Basically the Chinese blundered in, got mauled by militias and reservists and then got out because their foray was unsustainable. Meanwhile the regular Vietnamese army continued it’s operations in Cambodia and maintained a large reserve of regular units to protect the capital.
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incarnation was based on some shoddy principles (e.g. look at that great pyrrhic victory in Vietnam) and an extremely outdated doctrine and politicised military culture.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
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.
In the end it’s all guesswork because the PRC is a dictatorship that doesn’t like discussing it’s true military capabilities.
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.
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