China is seen as a formidable power due to its robust economic growth and military expansion in recent decades, but if experts are to be believed, the Chinese defence forces are weaker than they appear. Bonny Lin, Director of the China Power Project, said China was rather anxious about its defence against the backdrop of growing adversaries– US-led West and hostile neighbours. “Xi’s insistence on Chinese military strength at the party congress was in truth an admission of weakness: China cannot yet defeat its rivals, and Beijing knows it,” he said.
The same anxiety and insecurity led Chinese President Xi Jinping to take up the modernisation of its defence forces– the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Xi sacked several high-ranking military officials in an anti-corruption crackdown. This has however caused several problems. It hampered the efforts to modernise the PLA through the purchase of advanced equipment and training its personnel. The nine PLA generals who were purged were from the premier Rocket Force, Air Force, and Navy.
Yun Sun, Director of the China Program at Washington-based Stimson Centre, said more officers would be removed as a part of the purge, affecting China’s national security and military upgradation. “It will take some time for China to clean up the mess and restore confidence in the Rocket Force’s competence and trustworthiness. It means for the time being, China is at a weaker spot,” Yun said.
David Hutt, a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, expressed concerns over the purges when the PLA lacked combat experience for almost a half-decade. “Xi Jinping, the supreme leader, has already purged the military ranks probably because of corruption – yet many of his communist ancestors found out what happens when you cut off the venal but experienced head of the armed forces. Who knows how much defence spending has already been stolen?” he said.
According to US intelligence officials, the purge was followed by the revelation of several cases of graft in the PLA. Missiles were found to be filled with water instead of fuel and launching systems were malfunctioning. “These flaws would compromise missile operations, calling into question China’s nuclear force readiness and overall capabilities,” said Jon Wolfsthal, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists.
Chinese forces are inexperienced in modern warfare as they have not engaged in any big battle since the Vietnam War in 1979, which the PLA had lost. Timothy R. Heath, a defence research analyst at California-based think tank RAND Corporation, said “Yet the one asset that the PLA conspicuously lacks is combat experience, and Xi can do little about it short of waging 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 first-hand combat experience.”
China has made massive strides in building a stronger PLA which has the world’s largest number of personnel, massive spy services, and state-of-the-art weapons. However, inexperience in the war arena remains the biggest drawback. “I am retiring soon. My one big regret is that I never had a chance to fight in a war,” former PLA Army General He Lei. Heath said the PLA has quite a few personnel who understand tactics like the human-wave assault or have the ability to navigate or read maps and calculate firing distances.
Xi has undertaken reforms to modernise the PLA so as to achieve the status of a world-class military. However, there are obstacles such as the dominance of the ground force, interservice rivalry, lack of combat experience and, most importantly, ever-tightening control of the communist party on the PLA, said Dr Phillip C. Saunders, Director of the Centre for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs.
The infamous ‘One Child Policy’ has added heavily to the problems of the PLA’s stability in future. While the birth rate in China is slipping due to the demographic crisis, parents are getting averse to sending their only child to the military. “According to a 2020 census the fertility rate in China was 1.3 children per woman. This is well below the 2.1 children per woman rate necessary to prevent population decline. Fewer children simply means fewer soldiers and officers,” said Loro Horta, a diplomat from Timor Leste, who earlier studied at the American National Defense University.
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