What is Xi Jinping’s China Dream? To make China the biggest military power in the world by 2049. The Chinese president has all the rights to dream big but sometimes the reality might tell a different story. China has been spending a humongous amount of money to modernize its air force, and is bolstering its navy by building an arsenal of missiles. But there were scandalous failures in 2023-24 hinting at the personnel and equipment problems within China’s People Liberation Army (PLA) that revealed that there were chinks in the armor.
In late 2023 to early 2024 there were scandals caught in Chinese military that brought embarrassment to Xi Jinping’s regime. But even more discrepancies were unearthed when China faced personnel, logistics, command and even equipment problems that would have let them down in case of a real war. Conclusion, China’s military is weaker than what is assumed of it to be.
PLA has faltered in providing a good body armor to its soldiers to secure their lived during a war. Whenever an experienced soldier dies on a battlefield it is a big loss for the army that causes imbalance. Later an influx of unexperienced soldiers is sent as replacement, which creates a broken cycle that causes more causalities making the whole unit weak. The faulty Chinese equipment also came to fore when Russia tried to use them during the Russia-Ukraine war but was a big letdown on the field. There were tests done on Chinese armor sold online on American labs and it was found that the armor lacked basic resistance to 7.62 mm bullets, which means that they were ineffective on the field. This will cause significant injuries or even death to the soldiers wearing them, including the Chinese.
There were also recruitment problems that led to PLA not able to secure ranks in the army. Service in armed forces is mandatory in China and PLA has announced a 40% pay increase in January 2021 for troop stationed on the border and promising officers. PLA also wanted the 70% of the fresh graduates to be recruited in the PLA and the incentives helped them in getting the desired results. However, China was not able to retain its personnel, as only 35% of the soldiers who took part in the service chose to reenlist in active duty, and out of them the college graduates were even lesser. These recruitment issues led the PLA in not able to maintain a proper talent pool of experienced officers. Also, the high ranking officers in PLA are lowly paid. A colonel was paid $37,200 and brigadier generals made $40,000 in the year 2021, this was lesser than a private in the US Marine Corps who earned $43,800 in the same year. Finally, China lacked a proper department to aid its veteran offices same as the US Veterans Affairs department.
China recently has announced a defense budget of $700 billion, but it still faces issues related to recruitment, retention, and compensation, and is marred with corruption. For example, there were reports of Chinese officers selling solid fuel in open market.
Furthermore, China’s navy lacks trained naval aviators and planes showcasing poor aerial capabilities during a combat situation as compared to the United States, which makes it weaker in the skies as compared to water. Chinese neither has a organization to train aviators for its navy nor it intends to work on those grounds which will put them far behind during maritime warfare as compared to other nations such as the US. China also doesn’t have the right equipment to train its aviators, as it is mostly reliant on old-school JL-9G and Shenyang J-15 carrier-based planes that are too light and slow to practice complex maneuvers.
China has a big accumulation of ships in its navy, but most of them are not combat ready, like corvettes and frigates. China has no cruisers and 49 destroyers, compared to American 22 cruisers and 70 destroyers. As of 2022, China lacked behind US in terms of ship tonnage, which means PLA Navy had 1.3 million tons of ships compared to 4.5 million tons of the US Navy. In terms of undersea warfare, China is developing two nuclear submarines, the Type 095 and Type 096, but technologically it is far behind the US.
Strategy-wise too China lacks, as it relies on an anti-access/area denial strategy to mitigate some of the disadvantages it would face in a direct confrontation with the US. On the other hand, the US has a far superior submarines, stealth aircrafts, and Zumwalt-Class surface destroyers that can easily tackle China’s challenge in sea.
The PLA has an incomprehensible command structure that are devoid of reforms. Xi Jinping had installed units like Rocket Force, Joint Logistics Support Force, and Strategic Support Force in 2015 that managed information and cyber warfare. But these units lacked sync amongst themselves and with China’s defense systems and was not able to carry out simple operations like strategic air-lifts.
Amongst other weaknesses of Chinese military, it has lacked logistical capabilities around its borders, has not been combat-ready for over half a century, and is entirely a political entity that forces it to work as per Beijing’s whims and fancies.