How terrible is the Chinese military threat

There is a lot of talk about China's appetite for its neighbors. How adequate are they to reality, and is this what China wants?

fight? Discuss

Table of contents

  • History and military traditions
  • Economy, Military-industrial complex
  • Strategic position
  • Strategy and prospects
  • findings

How strong is the Chinese army?After all, as everyone understands that the strength of the army lies not only in technology, its quantity and quality, and not even only in the number of soldiers. We have previously written about new weapons and gave a general overview of China's capabilities in comparison with the military potential of Taiwan (the island is small but toothy).

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The reign of Comrade Xi is marked by seriousmilitary reforms that put an end to the old approaches to organization and management, created their own military-industrial complex almost independent of imports (even entered the world ranking, where they hold third place according to many experts). Finally, weapons are being upgraded at an incredible pace.

But what about other factors?What if the Chinese are trying to appear stronger, but in fact their power is zilch? It is important to consider things like economics, history, geography, social aspects, all of which will play a role in any conflict. So, there is a lot of talk about China's strength, but for now let's try to talk about weaknesses.

Well, how can such a nice gentleman be plotting some kind of evil?

History and military traditions

I don’t want to burden you, but you can’t help but look into the past.

If you have more or less delved into it, then you already know thatThroughout its history, China has resisted invasions rather poorly. Over the past millennium, the Chinese have raked first from the Mongol conquest for a hundred years in the 13th and 14th centuries, then there was a second conquest by the nomadic and warlike Manchus in 1644, whose Qing dynasty ruled until the Xinhai Revolution of 1912. The titular nation of the Han (this is the basis of the language and culture that we understand as Chinese) was subjected to harassment and humiliation by the Manchus ruling the empire.

Finally, the third conquest by the Japanese followed,which in the 30-40s of the last century cost, according to various estimates, 20-40 million victims. The liberation of the country happened rather due to the defeat of Japan in the US war and the Soviet operation to defeat the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

After the liberation from the Japanese and the establishment of the communist regime, there were also many controversial points.

Chinese surrender after a failed offensive, 1950

  • Participation in the Korean War against the United States 1950-1953. According to various estimates, it cost up to 400 thousandkilled soldiers (including the son of Mao himself). A million Chinese volunteers, at the cost of monstrous losses, held back the advance of the US army, but they failed to defeat or move away from the 38th parallel (the border of North and South Korea today) in the battle with the Americans.

  • The conflict on Damansky in March 1969when short-term fighting againstSoviet border guards and soldiers cost the Chinese 800 killed out of 2500 involved, while the USSR lost 58 people (according to Soviet data, but nevertheless, the gap is significant). The weak fire capabilities and the training of the Chinese infantry affected.

  • Sino-Vietnamese War 1979. Had similar causes to the previous conflict,we will not go deep. But in the end it all ended in a draw: they fought at the border, and the losses were equal. But world experts agreed that, given the difference in military capabilities, China screwed up the wildest.

Cheerful rubilovo with the Vietnamese from Chinese cinema

But, of course, in an internal view of Chinese history, all these wars are represented by victories, and the number of losses is very different in the direction of significant understatement.

What conclusion can we draw from all this?And such that China has always rather poorly solved its political tasks by military force. In general, the war is clearly not their forte. Although this is not a verdict, because a lot has changed.

Economy, Military-industrial complex

China has long been the world's forge, and by sharethe world market, the country goes head to head with the United States. Leading positions in almost all industries - most of everything that surrounds us is made in China. During Xi's rule, there was a breakthrough in the military-industrial complex - now China is actively trading in weapons.

The export tank VT-4 has great prospects in world markets

©Norinco

He traded them in previous years, but then itit was a la the USSR, but cheaper (and, as a rule, worse). But today China is perceived as an exporter of high-tech weapons - they especially distinguished themselves in air defense systems, MLRS, tanks and UAVs. Chinese FD-2000s are catching up with Russian S-300s, and many predict the prospect of ousting the T-90MS from the markets for the export tank VT-4.

As for tactical missile systems - it is necessaryto believe that the Chinese are world leaders here. But everything else is covered in fog. The Celestial Empire is in no particular hurry to share information, so it is extremely difficult to assess the number of modern weapons and their quality inside the country.

The military-industrial complex cannot startsharply: it needs the conditions for the periodicity of wars and the arms race, where weapons and technologies are tested. And even the exported samples of the Chinese military-industrial complex are fighting little. Here is a good example of the USSR, when World War II and the subsequent Cold War made the military industry of the Union one of the strongest in the world. And this despite the fact that in other sectors the Union most often chronically lagged behind.

Anti-aircraft missile system HQ-9 (FD-2000)

Therefore, the modern Russian Federation has one of the prioritythe military commissar remained the position of technological export. The market for weapons, especially serious ones, is more complex and has little connection with other civilian trade. And the Russian military-industrial complex suffered the least after the collapse of the USSR, it still has something to show and offer.

China's high-tech weaponsstill competes little in the field of quality withGeneral Dynamic, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin. And in its own region, it also has competitors in the form of South Korea (its tanks and self-propelled guns are considered among the best in the world) and Japan, which produces military products in close cooperation with the United States.

Therefore, basically the Celestial Empire crushes a lot of small and poor countries in Africa and the Middle East, which replace Soviet / Russian models with Chinese products.

The fifth-generation fighter J-20 is considered by many to be a bluff that hides the weakness of the Chinese defense industry.

China Daily/via REUTERS

Today, Chinese weapons are treated with skepticism, and it is customary not to trust the technical characteristics of weapons, voiced by the Chinese themselves.

Strategic position

As we can see, China is in no hurry to declare itselfas a reliable ally of Russia, but here lies the other side of the coin - and who today can call himself a true ally of China? The Chinese economy is actively expanding, dozens of countries depend on the Celestial Empire, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and many, many others.

But in a purely military sense, who will agreeharness for China in international showdowns? North Korea? - Well, it's like that. Otherwise, for many, China is a dangerous neighbor, and it has earned this reputation for a long time and hard. Many satellites in the event of a crisis would rather see the giant weaken than risk their neck.

Shooting from a grenade launcher in Chinese exercises

Reuters

Over the past decades, China has managed with partto make war on neighbors, and part of it was able to cut off quite well in terms of territory during “leveling the borders (especially with the CIS countries) - leveled by 2000 square kilometers. As you can see, the Chinese love to pressure, force and keep in fear more than making friends.

And now China has also received its own in Asia“NATO” is the AUKUS (Australia, Britain, USA) alliance in the Pacific Ocean, with which Taiwan is closely cooperating, and Japan is about to join. The combined power of the fleets and air forces of AUKUS and their partners greatly exceeds the power of China, even taking into account the rapid growth of the latter. On the side of the alliance there is both a technological and, finally, a nuclear advantage.

Strategy and prospects

China itself is internally suffering from overpopulation andunemployment. The ecological situation in the country is far from normal, and in a number of regions it can be characterized as catastrophic - the rapid growth of industry, which has been associated with barbaric methods in relation to the environment, is to blame for the past decades.

One of the main Chinese rivers, the Yellow River, is in a state of ecological disaster. 30,000 shallow rivers have disappeared and fresh water problems could become critical for China

© Jianan Yu / Reuters

Another scourge of China is corruption.Famous for the annual execution of officials, the country suffers heavily from it. At all levels, there is a dragging of their own through blasphemy, and sending many big shots one way is more likely the results of a showdown between competing clans than a real fight against corruption. Executions are going on, but corruption is still there.

Corruption in the army has become a separate problem -even Xi openly declared the need to work in this direction at the beginning of his reforms. Saws, kickbacks, that's all ... and much more. And also internal separatism - East Turkestan with the Uyghurs, Tibet, itching Taiwan, and these are only those problems that the PRC leadership recognizes and officially voices.

If the country is drawn into a major conflict, many of these problems will flare up, the border provinces will be restless.

China depends on merchandise exports, and also onraw material imports - even if all technologies are mastered, if imports of various rare earth metals are blocked, the production of military electronics will become impossible. And the fuel crisis paralyzes the internal economic ties of a vast country. And don't forget that the Chinese are very dependent on food imports - severing many economic ties will bring starvation to a densely populated country.

Many of the Russians would like to see familiar faces here, but even executions do not help the Chinese solve the problems of corruption

AFP

Thus, the buildup of power in the Pacificseem rather vain, and the military solution of the Taiwan issue will become too expensive - a small island will not pay for the losses that will have to be incurred.

Much more promising to start to acquirea reliable source of raw materials to make a possible autonomous existence less risky. Preferably, with weak and not dangerous neighbors, equally at enmity with Chinese opponents.

findings

So, we can briefly judge the following:

  • China is too involved in the international economy. God knows what kind of collapse awaits the world if it is cut off from Chinese goods, but China itself will be worse off anyway.

China is one of the technologically advanced countries in the world, it is foolish to leave such a niche for the sake of ambitions to conquer a small island

  • The Chinese army and weapons are no longer clones of the Soviet army, but there are still a lot of Soviet-style weapons, andthe lion's share of military technology is developed from Soviet designs, many of whichorbackward,or do not fitthose military tasks that await China.

  • China has no serious allies, it is not a member of serious military coalitions, not many countries are interested in strengthening it and expanding its zones of influence.

  • China is historically bad at military tasks, but by diplomatic and economic leversalready achieved great results. In addition, the country has not been involved in any conflict for more than 40 years. The command has no experience in conducting serious military operations.

  • China, despite the progress of the armed forces,technically continuesnoticeablyfall behind fromtheir potentialopponentson the Pacific Ocean.

India-China border is one of the most turbulent in the world

In general, do not forget that in addition to directthe difficulties of invading Taiwan, there are other factors - the risk of defeat, which will cost the loss of economic gains of many past decades. Yes, and victory would rather complicate the situation, and obviously the confrontation would destabilize the internal situation in the provinces.

China's policy is very rational, so it is unlikelyit is to be expected that the issue of imperial prestige for the sake of controlling a small island will come at a heavy cost. But, of course, the army will never be reformed and modernized at such a pace as in China, if they do not plan to use it widely. Most likely, China will use its army in regions that are not bound by alliances with advanced economies, or even oppose them. Such is the struggle for the right to call itself the main enemy of the United States.