In a rare show of candour, the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, has admitted that the Chinese military has a shortage of trained and skilled troops required to operate state-of-the-art military equipment.
The South China Morning Post published the report based on an assessment by PLA Daily – the propaganda mouthpiece of the Chinese army. The army doesn’t have enough skilled troops to operate high-tech hardware, the PLA Daily said.
Revelations made in the assessment:
1. The report highlights a core problem: as China speeds up the modernisation of the PLA, a lack of hi-tech expertise is limiting state-of-the-art equipment from being used to its full extent, especially in the navy.
2. Top commanders within the PLA are yet to complete a basic training test. This includes the vice-captain of a Chinese warship, Wang Yubing. Yubing is one of the several naval soldiers who has been made a vice-captain before the completion of his training.
3. According to the PLA Daily report on December 26, the vice-captain of the Type 056 corvette, Zhangye, was not been able to finish a crucial training assessment.
4. Shortage of adequately skilled personnel to operate the newly-enlisted ships and hi-tech hardware is a situation which has been termed by the report as “equipment awaiting talent”. It says “in recent years, a number of old ships have been retired, and a host of new warships have been commissioned, but there are very few people who know how to operate them and this has made the problem of ‘equipment awaiting talent’ become increasingly severe”.
5. There is training resource imbalance within the PLA and it is unable to organise the training of some commanders and key soldiers systematically, due to which the final training assessments are running behind schedule.
The admission by the official mouthpiece comes a month after the clash between Indian and Chinese troops along the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector.
The revelation comes close on the heels of a growing competition between China and its rivals in the Indo-Pacific region. Recently, the Liaoning Battle Carrier group sailed close to the US Pacific island territory of Guam, which houses very strategically placed military facilities.
Why is the PLA in such an abysmal condition?
1. Conscription: Conscription, also called draft, is compulsory enrollment for service in a country’s armed forces. Military service is mandatory for all Chinese citizens and the practice of conscription is held high even in the Chinese constitution. However, the conscription cycle comes with its own set of challenges. The PLA relies on approximately 8,00,000 conscripts that have to serve for two years and each conscript is trained for 90 days, with 16 days of political indoctrination. Due to this policy, the forces lose 20 to 35 per cent of their combat power for a period of three to four months annually.
2. Recruiting and retaining qualified personnel: The PLA recruits heavily but fails to retain professionals. The Chinese army recruits a high number of poor youths from rural backgrounds who join for the perks. The educated city dwellers tend to leave the army and experts blame the one-child policy for this.
3. One Child Policy: China’s one-child policy produces pampered children who cannot withstand military discipline. When in the army, they are dissatisfied, the service is poor, perks are few and this weakens the force by depriving it of high-quality professionals.
4. Civilian oversight: The PLA is characterized by extremely weak civilian control. There is a total absence of civilian oversight and the only civilian in the military’s chain of command is said to be the chairman of China’s central military commission.
5. Insufficient training: Beijing’s propaganda videos of the PLA don’t quite tell the real story. They gloss over the fact that Chinese soldiers undergo insufficient training in conditions that are not challenging enough. Military exercises are not seen as a chance to identify problems. The aim is to always succeed and this reduces military training into opportunities to impress the supervisors.
In October 2019, the Chinese orienteering team was disqualified for cheating at the world military games in Wuhan city. In 2015, Chinese troops, as part of the UN peacekeeping force in Sudan, are said to have fled the battlefield instead of engaging in combat.
One of the world’s largest fighting forces, which claims itself to be superior and doesn’t hesitate to threaten its neighbours, doesn’t have troops with the required skill set or experience.
China has the largest navy in the world by size of fleet and has been bolstering its capability by modernizing and inducting cutting-edge vessels. It has the world’s largest fighting force with over two million active personnel. But as it turns out, its size is only a facade to hide its reality because the PLA is facing a shortage of efficient troops.
The recent revelations puncture China’s argument about the might of its army.
