The Amazing Reason China Might Lose a Modern War

David Axe

Security, Asia

The last time the People's Liberation Army fought a major conflict was in 1979, when "a seasoned Vietnamese military demolished a bungled Chinese invasion," according to Heath.

Fact: "Today the U.S. military possesses arguably more combat experience than any other armed forces, owing to the long-term American-led operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere."

The Chinese military has almost no combat experience, analyst Timothy Heath wrote for the California think-tank RAND. But that inexperience might not matter very much, Heath explained.

“Today, China's military has an increasingly impressive high-tech arsenal, but its ability to use these weapons and equipment remains unclear. There are reasons to be skeptical.”

(This first appeared last month.)

The last time the People's Liberation Army fought a major conflict was in 1979, when "a seasoned Vietnamese military demolished a bungled Chinese invasion," according to Heath.

At the time, the Vietnamese military was still fresh from its defeat of U.S. and allied forces in the early 1970s. The Chinese Communist Party, by contrast, had gutted its own armed forces through politically-motivated purges.

"The deleterious consequences are evident in the PLA's reversion to discredited, but low-skill, tactics like the human-wave assault, as well as in the inability of infantrymen to navigate or read maps and the inaccuracy of artillerymen due to unfamiliarity with procedures for measuring distances and calculating firing distances," Heath wrote.

"The ghost of that defeat still hovers over the PLA," he continued. "In China, authorities have largely chosen to ignore an embarrassing conflict that fits awkwardly with Beijing's narrative of a peaceful rise, but the official silence has left many PLA veterans disillusioned about their participation in the war."

"The few combat veterans who remain in service will all retire within the next few years, which means the military will soon have no personnel with firsthand combat experience."

But that doesn't mean Beijing can't "win" a major war. Although it's debatable whether any party truly would "win" in such a conflict, given the potentially profound loss of life and the economic, ecological and political chaos that surely would result from the war.