The slogan "catch up and overtake" in Beijing was adopted and exceededThe Communists won the civil war in China only thanks to the help of the USSR.
The modern PRC owes its very existence to Moscow. And for the first decade and a half of its life, China in all spheres relied only on Soviet aid.
In particular, only the Chinese Armed Forces were equipped with Soviet weapons, while Soviet specialists created the Chinese military-industrial complex. Supplies of the most modern Soviet armored vehicles (" Chinese armored vehicles are reaching the world level ", "NWO", 19.08.22), artillery (" New Chinese Wall of Fire ", "NWO", 05.08.22), aviation, ground-based air defense (" Evolution of the Chinese umbrella ", "NWO", 25.03.22), missiles of various classes (" From the Han Dynasty to Xi Jinping ", "HBO", 02.07.21), warships and boats.
Direct deliveries very soon turned into licensed production of all this equipment at Chinese enterprises. The Korean War contributed to the growth of military and military-technical cooperation, during which the PLA ground forces, under the cover of Soviet fighters, saved the DPRK from defeat.
INDEPENDENT DEGRADATIONAt the same time, already in the 1950s, the leadership of the People's Republic of China sought full independence in relation to the Soviet Union.
Therefore, on the one hand, Beijing was knocking out more and more weapons and their production technologies from Moscow, on the other hand, it was pursuing an increasingly independent domestic and foreign policy. Having received the technology for the production of nuclear weapons from the USSR, Beijing went to a complete break with Moscow, which by the end of the 1960s had reached direct armed conflicts.
The break with the Soviet Union, combined with the "cultural revolution", accompanied by the almost complete defeat of Chinese science, extremely slowed down the development of the PLA and the Chinese military-industrial complex. By that time, China had been producing Soviet equipment for a long time without any licenses, but in the current situation, even this became a problem.
However, in the 1970s, Beijing, on the basis of opposition to Moscow, began to actively cooperate with Western countries, including in the military-technical sphere. In the USA, France, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, multi-purpose helicopters, ground-based air defense, naval weapons (artillery, torpedoes), aircraft missiles, engines for equipment of various classes, various radar stations (radars), sonar stations (GAS) for submarines and surface ships were purchased. The events in Tiananmen Square in 1989 led to the establishment by the West of an embargo on the supply of weapons to China, but non-lethal equipment (engines, radar, GAS, some helicopters) it didn't touch. In addition to acquiring Western weapons, China extracted Soviet equipment in various ways, which it was much easier for it to master and copy than Western ones.
China, together with Western and Arab countries, provided enormous assistance to the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan. Most of the Soviet soldiers and officers in this country died from Chinese, and not from Western weapons (" Afghan lesson for Russia ", "HBO", 06.04.18).
AT THE BOTTOMIn February 1979, the PRC committed direct aggression against Vietnam, the closest ally of the USSR in Asia ("What is the cunning of the eastern partner of Moscow, HBO, 13.04.18). Despite the huge numerical superiority in people and equipment, the PLA conducted the war extremely unsuccessfully, suffering heavy losses.
Just a month after the start of the aggression, China was forced to withdraw troops from Vietnam. [...]
The radical economic reforms in China that began at the end of 1978 were initially accompanied by a significant reduction in military spending and the number of PLA personnel. By the end of the 1980s, the Chinese Armed Forces represented a huge (albeit reduced) mass of poorly trained people. And an equally huge "scrap yard", that is, equipment of the level at best of the early 1960s. Only the presence of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery allowed the PLA to be taken more or less seriously.
At the same time, however, Beijing restored relations with Moscow and obtained from it the withdrawal of troops from Mongolia. In addition, the supply of Soviet weapons to the People's Republic of China resumed, and immediately the latest (S-300P air defense systems, Su-27 fighters). Thanks to these purchases, which in the 1990s (already from Russia) they have become much more ambitious, for a number of classes of equipment, the Chinese military-industrial complex was able to immediately "jump over a generation" and reach a completely modern level.
SCOUTING FORDS IN THE OCEANIn the 1990s, the PLA, like China as a whole, developed on the principle of "crossing the river, groping for stones."
The Chinese military-industrial complex was moving more and more confidently along the same path that the Soviet military-industrial complex once followed: from direct copying of foreign samples through their "creative development" to the creation of completely or almost completely domestic equipment.
New Chinese military equipment was initially produced in small quantities to work out the methods of its application and eliminate technical problems. Surprisingly, many foreign observers (especially Russian ones) considered that China would always act according to the same schemes.
In fact, of course, China was not going to act in this way. Having "groped the stones", that is, having made sure of the suitability of this piece of equipment for operation, he proceeded to its mass production. Basically, this mass production began in the XXI century, while China demonstrated the enormous production capabilities of its military-industrial complex, which have no analogues in the world.
This was especially evident in the construction of the PLA Navy, which in less than two decades turned from a huge in number, but extremely archaic and almost incapacitated "mosquito fleet" ("The Mosquito Fleet is a thing of the past", "HBO", 03.09.21) into a huge modern ocean fleet, still inferior in overall potential The US Navy, but in the Asia-Pacific region is already unequivocally the strongest (" Celestial Armada ", "NWO", 01.10.21). The weak points of the Chinese fleet are nuclear submarines (" Arming the fastest in the world ", "NWO", 23.07.21) and minesweeping forces, but problems are being solved here too fast enough.
The construction of the Chinese Navy naturally has an anti-American and anti-Japanese orientation. The immediate main task of the Chinese fleet is the annexation of Taiwan to ensure that the US and Japanese fleets cannot prevent this (" Battle of the Titans ", "HBO", 06/19/20). Then the task of unambiguous dominance of the PLA Navy will be solved first in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, then in the World Ocean as a whole.
The division of the PLA Navy into the Northern, Eastern and Southern Fleets is largely artificial, since China has a single extended ocean coast and a developed fleet basing system. Thanks to this, he is able to quickly create naval groupings in any direction.
MISSILES, AIR DEFENSE AND AVIATIONThe Chinese nuclear missile forces are developing no less rapidly, the basis of which is the PLA Missile Forces ("China is hiding behind a nuclear shield", "NWO", 25.11.22). The total number of nuclear charges in service with this and other types of the Armed Forces of the People's Republic of China, of course, is unknown.
But it obviously has nothing to do with the figures "200-300" officially distributed by Western analytical centers (and all of them are allegedly not deployed!). The actual number of charges almost certainly exceeds 2 thousand, possibly at times. [...]
So far, most of the charges have been installed on medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) and operational-tactical missiles (OTR). That is, it posed a threat to Russia, India, and Japan. The breakthrough in the development of the Chinese nuclear deterrent forces (SNF) was the adoption of the DF-41 multi-charge intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), thanks to which they can in a short time practically match their potential with American and Russian ones.
On the basis of Soviet and Russian systems and technologies, China has created the most powerful ground-based air defense (air defense), comparable only to the Russian one and significantly superior to others. The main part of ground-based air defense, of course, is concentrated around Beijing, but it is gradually "spreading" throughout the country ("The Celestial Empire looks after the heavens ", "HBO", 04/15/12).
The PLA Air Force is rapidly being re-equipped with new equipment. In particular, in terms of the number of fighters of the 5th generation, they have already reached the second place in the world after the US Air Force, significantly surpassing the Russian Aerospace Forces (" Through the thorns to the fifth generation ", "HBO", 02/25/12). Most of the Chinese Air Force and naval aviation are deployed in the eastern half of the country. Naval aviation and bomber aviation of the Air Force ("The sky darkens from red dragons ", "HBO", 03/18/12) are oriented primarily to the east and south (against Taiwan, the USA, Japan, ASEAN countries), tactical aviation is oriented "in all azimuths".
Due to the high mobility of this type of aircraft and the well-developed airfield network, the Chinese command is able to quickly create powerful aviation groups in any strategic direction. The main problems of Chinese aviation are a certain lag in the development of helicopters (" Celestial Rotorcraft Empire ", "HBO", 17.12.21), imperfection of aircraft engines and some shortage of high-precision ammunition for hitting ground targets, but they cannot be considered critical in any way.
At the same time, China, together with the United States and Israel, entered the top three world leaders in the development of not only reconnaissance, but also combat unmanned aerial vehicles (" Technologies of deserted war ", "HBO", 05/21/2011).
GROUND FORCESThe PLA ground forces are developing no less rapidly than other types of armed forces, and in four directions at once:
– heavy formations (classic troops on tracked vehicles);
– medium formations (all classes of ground vehicles, but on a wheeled chassis, the only foreign analogue is the American "Stryker" brigades, and the Chinese medium brigades are stronger than "Strykers");
– light formations (mobile units on light vehicles, including mountain and airborne);
– amphibious compounds (on floating machines of Chinese design, which have no foreign analogues at all).
The geographical distribution of ground forces is very definite: heavy forces are oriented to the north and west (Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, India, partly Korea), the rest – to the east and south (Taiwan and Southeast Asia).
As part of the 2017 military reform, the PLA is divided into five territorial commands, including 13 army groups, as well as two districts with special status (Xinjiang and Tibetan).
Army groups have conditionally the same composition; each has six combined–arms brigades (seven in one) and six special brigades ("Communist War Brigades", "HVO", 09/16/12). In reality, army groups differ quite a lot in composition (especially in the set of combined-arms brigades), which is determined primarily by their location dislocations, that is, those military tasks that they have to solve. The Air Force also almost completely switched to a brigade structure (" Air armadas in all directions ", "HVO", 01.04.22).
IMMEDIATE PROSPECTSAs the main task of the development of the PLA in the near future, the military-political leadership sets "the connection of mechanization with informatization".
This implies further qualitative improvement of equipment of all classes while increasing its number in conjunction with the implementation of the concept of network-centric warfare.
The main disadvantage of the PLA is the complete lack of combat experience (since the Vietnam War). Obviously, this shortcoming will be eliminated in the near future. As mentioned above, the most important task of the PLA in the short term is the accession of Taiwan. Then (or even before that), perhaps, a "training" will be held in the DPRK (" Chinese views on North Korea ", "NWO", 30.09.22) or in one of the ASEAN countries (" China, Indonesia, Philippines: great friendship or great war? ", "NWO", 26.08.22). After that, the main direction of the PLA's actions will finally become the west and the north. H
Alexander KhramchikhinAlexander Anatolyevich Khramchikhin is an independent military expert.
