Can The Chinese Army Fight a Modern War? Expert Says No.

Jane Perlez

February 23, 2015

U.S. Expert Finds Faults in Chinese Military Command

As exchanges between the American and Chinese militaries increase, so, too, do the reports of publicly available research on the People’s Liberation Army by American experts working outside the Pentagon.

This month the California-based RAND Corporation published a lengthy report on the weaknesses of the P.L.A. that focused on the human dimension rather than weapons.

Much of the research was based on open-source material in the Chinese military press. Now, a former Army attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, Dennis J. Blasko, has published a piece on the Chinese military not doing so well, and he draws on the military press for his conclusions.

In his article, “Ten Reasons Why China Will Have Trouble Fighting a Modern War,” published on the military affairs blog War on the Rocks, Mr. Blasko cited an antiquated chain of command, too many military personnel assigned to nonmilitary duties such as communications and transport, and too few officers trained in joint command operations.

In the past two years, Mr. Blasko wrote, Chinese Navy and Air Force officers have commanded joint exercises, but these appear to have been limited in scope and number. In late 2014, he said, the P.L.A. publicly recognized the lack of experience of its top officers in joint commands and announced a new program for the selection, training and appointment of joint operation commanding officers.

Like the RAND report, Mr. Blasko’s article stresses a lack of realistic training for the P.L.A. Efforts are being made to rectify this shortcoming, but some problems can sound rather quaint. One Chinese military journal referred to throwing away “night lanterns” during training. The Chinese often write in parables, Mr. Blasko said in an interview, and in this case the night lanterns were apparently a reference to flashlights that needed to be replaced with night-vision goggles.

Several units have been created to serve as enemy forces in confrontational training exercises, and mock combat exercises between the services have been conducted, he said. Still, the drive to improve training has a long way to go. “Increasing realism in training will require additional funds, particularly for fuel and maintenance expenses and for more and better training areas and training simulators,” he wrote.

The land forces, always the strength of the P.L.A. after it was transformed from a guerrilla force to a national army in 1949, continue to dominate the Chinese military, even though China insists that these days it is a major maritime power, Mr. Blasko said. The army makes up more than 72 percent of the 2.3 million members of the active duty force. About 10 percent of the personnel are in the navy, and 17 percent in the air force. Last year, the army boasted 24 full generals; the navy had three full admirals; and the air force had five full generals, he reported.

In 2013, the P.L.A. announced that changes would be made to its force structure, but it has yet to release details. Mr. Blasko said, “It is likely they will take several years to implement and trouble-shoot, likely causing disruptions and discontent along the way for those people and organizations who lose power and authority in these bureaucratic struggles.”

So far, there has been no official Chinese reaction to Mr. Blasko’s 10 points. But the Chinese military does read foreign assessments. For example, Zhang Junshe, a researcher with the Naval Military Studies Research Institute and an authorized interlocutor with Western militaries who attends conferences with foreign scholars and visits the United States, slammed the RAND report.

In a statement on China Military Online, Mr. Zhang mentioned the RAND report and another recent study on the military by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

“Western countries don’t take an objective attitude toward China’s national defense construction and military development,” Mr. Zhang said. Whenever the West wants to emphasize China’s increasing military capacity, Western articles “exaggerate equipment advantages and combat capability,” he said. But whenever the United States wants to stress American military might, Washington disparages the Chinese military, he said.

In the new era of greater military exchanges between the United States and China, a close study of the P.L.A. is as essential as ever, Mr. Blasko said in the interview.

“I have found that any learning involved with exchanges with the P.L.A. depends on how much you know beforehand,” he said. “If you know nothing or little, very little is learned. If you are prepared and knowledgeable, you can learn a lot more than you are told. If done too aggressively, ‘learning’ can be perceived as collecting intelligence.”