Chinese military corruption

So i've decided to make a series of sorts about the Chinese military and subjects about it and its enemies. A couple days ago some anons were asking about whether corruption in the Chinese military was like corruption in the Russian military.

First of all i'm going to just say right off the bat that Russian military corruption is VERY different from the PLA's. I was initially amazed upon looking into this at how different they were and you shouldn't start looking into Chinese corruption with the same initial lens as you looked at Russia's either. But if you want to get an in-depth look of Russian military corruption, this guy's been hot shit lately, and what i’m saying will make more sense if you watch his video on Russian corruption first.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC3ehuUksTyQ7bbjGntmx3Q

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  1. 1 year ago
    War against Vietnam

    Ik most of you are probably aware of the Sino-Vietnamese war in which China invaded, did poorly and was promptly thrown back, but i’m also sure that the broader mindset, ambitions and goals of China’s leaders isn’t really discussed.
    The first goal of China’s invasion was to attempt to defend their ally, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. This is the big and well-known one.

    The second goal is within the broader backdrop of the Sino-Soviet rivalry, in which the Vietnamese were supported by the Soviets, and Cambodia by the Chinese (and West.) China largely invaded Vietnam with the political blessing and agreement not to interfere from the United States. Because Soviet-backed Vietnam had invaded Soviet-backed Cambodia, China decided to launch an invasion which would shift the balance of power in Asia back in their favor away from the Soviets.

    The third and least-discussed goal is Deng Xiaoping’s frustrations and plans for the future of the Chinese military. The post-cultural revolution PLA was so riddled with corruption as to result in entire Chinese divisions refusing to ignore orders and instead farm for profit, and nobody stopping them when ordered to go to some other province for garrison duties. The PLA needed to modernize and rid itself of crippling corruption, it needed to show the USSR wasn’t dominant in Southeast Asia and it needed to do both fast.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >did poorly and was promptly thrown back
      lol. no.

      >The first goal of China’s invasion was to attempt to defend their ally, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. This is the big and well-known one.

      >The second goal is within the broader backdrop of the Sino-Soviet rivalry,

      you got primary and secondary completely mixed up. Ask yourself where the cat A units were in 79. Hint: they were at the sino soviet border.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        The US military is far more corrupt than the PLA.

        It's true. Almost every piece of US equipment could be made for half the cost or even 75% of the cost. US troops are frequently sent to guard capitalist business interests rather than real US geopolitical goals. And US generals are all yes men who are more focused on divisive diversity politics than anything resembling military strategy or troop readiness.

        https://i.imgur.com/5q2XHlR.jpg

        The ZTQ-15 is probably the best recent example of this because it’s the most blatant example of all four PLA branches squaring off for more Yuan.

        It starts off with the Ground Forces saying they’re going to develop a lightweight and fast tank for the mountainous Tibetan plateau. Fair enough, a perfectly valid need. The Central commission approves development and procurement.

        Then the Navy comes along and says that it’s also going to procure them, even though they already have more than one amphibious 105-mm gun platform, and justifies this by saying that eastern Taiwan has mountains and also we can deliver these across oceans better.

        Then the Air Force, not wanting to be left out of the party, announces that it’s also going to procure them in order to form air assault brigades which can be deployed faster than either the Army or Navy.

        Next thing you know more than 400 ZTQ15s are built in 3 years and spread across 3 branches. Western analysts look at this and conclude that the PLA is making their expeditionary forces more lethal and capable but all that’s really happening is that the branches are just angling for more money. Yes, at the end of the day, they developed a platform that IS usable across all three branches, branch heads can now present the report to the CMC to claim they achieved "joint operational capabilities"-but it was never driven by a need to actually enable joint ops.

        Within the PLA there’s plenty of room for the top brass to skim money from the procurement budget with… creative accounting. If you can justify that your branch needs more money, then that's another potential area where you can keep some cash for yourself. And with the creation of the theater command system that aims to fully unify the branches under a single chain of command, it creates even more opportunity for this kind of embezzlement to take place.

        Yes and no. Corruption in the US is legal. It's not legal in China. Happens quite frequently in both countries.

        [...]
        You don't even know how your tax dollars are spent, lol.

        No gun, no opinion.
        Post gun.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          uh ohhhhh
          You're replying to multiple people, btw.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Timestamp, moron tourist.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Chinks are all about saving face. All talks.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          It's gonna be pretty hilarious when Biden makes AR-15's illegal and /k/ becomes nothing but military talk. Gonna be good to finally get rid of the Fudds.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Ban AR15s
            >Fudds will all be gone
            What?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Have you posted yours?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      https://i.imgur.com/jd1yOt7.jpg

      Thus when he assumed Supreme Leader status, Deng began a long, grinding high intensity twelve-year border war with the Vietnamese from 1979 to 1991. The usual procedure was for a random Chinese army group to deploy, fire several thousand rounds of mortar and artillery, fight to gain possession of 2-3 large Vietnamese hills, be assessed by Deng’s hand-picked commissars (remember comrade, the Party controls the gun; the gun does not control the Party) then rotate off the line in regular shifts, in order to expose areas of corruption within the officers’ ranks and the need for improvements with real combat experience.

      Deng Xiaoping called it ‘pinching the Tiger’s ass’ and for the most part, it worked. Many Chinese officers that had inflated their rosters with fake soldiers and equipment to steal funds were exposed. Most notably 2 of the 4 regimental COs of the PLA 31st Division were dismissed and gulag’ed for selling artillery shells on the black market and Deng also introduced a decree stating that men who were confirmed to be good-standing Vietnam combat vets were to always be given more special considerations for promotion to prevent the Central Military Commision getting top heavy with desk jockeys, hence why many of the heads of the present-day PLA are former Vietnam border war grunts.

      Chinese field tactics, command structure, combined-arms ops and the success of their individual offensives gradually became more and more competent to the point where they could push PAVN forces off of any given hill more or less at will by 1984. One PLA army group commander who was a veteran of Korea wrote that it was the first time in his career
      where he finally no longer had to worry about artillery ammo arriving on time. Putting an ineffective military through a conflict exposes any issues in leadership or equipment very quickly and in China’s case it started both the modernization process of the PLA and also its culture of its corruption.

      https://i.imgur.com/r1zc8mH.jpg

      This isn’t to say that more low-grade corruption is gone entirely. It wasn’t and still isn’t, but it has been greatly diminished enough that it largely shifted the PLA’s corruption culture. China’s post Mao economic boom was when the PLA shifted its corrupt practices away from the more primitive Russian style, to a sort of financial greed that I can only conclude is a combination of modern Western militaries and Imperial Japan. Namely, that the dominant aspect of PLA corruption is now procurement fund skimming amidst a newly-emerging interservice rivalry.

      One thing to keep in mind: the PLA has traditionally been dominated by the Ground forces with the Air Force, Navy etc being subordinate to the Army, but have of late shifted to a point where the PLAAF, PLAN and even other minor branches have leverage and ability to squabble on an equal footing over funding with the Army.

      So within the PLA now, what we see is actually quite similar to Imperial Japan during the Meiji era. The Imperial Jap Army and Navy famously bickered with each other over everything and insisted on having each other’s capabilities, which resulted in them both having their own entirely separate air forces, infantry divisions of Navy personnel and submarines/aircraft carriers crewed by the Army, with the larger goal of securing more and more of the state budget for themselves.

      It’s a lot of the same shit in the modern PLA; the brass aims to make money and expand their own relevance by bloating the procurement system. Within the PLA different branches will go through parallel development of the same capabilities, sometimes even with the same platforms. However the reasoning isn't so much the Jap mindset of "oh we don't trust the other branches can do it because WE’RE the most important force," but more along the more Western lines of "we wanna do the same thing they can, but we need more money for that Mr. President"-all so they can inflate their own budgets.

      https://i.imgur.com/5q2XHlR.jpg

      The ZTQ-15 is probably the best recent example of this because it’s the most blatant example of all four PLA branches squaring off for more Yuan.

      It starts off with the Ground Forces saying they’re going to develop a lightweight and fast tank for the mountainous Tibetan plateau. Fair enough, a perfectly valid need. The Central commission approves development and procurement.

      Then the Navy comes along and says that it’s also going to procure them, even though they already have more than one amphibious 105-mm gun platform, and justifies this by saying that eastern Taiwan has mountains and also we can deliver these across oceans better.

      Then the Air Force, not wanting to be left out of the party, announces that it’s also going to procure them in order to form air assault brigades which can be deployed faster than either the Army or Navy.

      Next thing you know more than 400 ZTQ15s are built in 3 years and spread across 3 branches. Western analysts look at this and conclude that the PLA is making their expeditionary forces more lethal and capable but all that’s really happening is that the branches are just angling for more money. Yes, at the end of the day, they developed a platform that IS usable across all three branches, branch heads can now present the report to the CMC to claim they achieved "joint operational capabilities"-but it was never driven by a need to actually enable joint ops.

      Within the PLA there’s plenty of room for the top brass to skim money from the procurement budget with… creative accounting. If you can justify that your branch needs more money, then that's another potential area where you can keep some cash for yourself. And with the creation of the theater command system that aims to fully unify the branches under a single chain of command, it creates even more opportunity for this kind of embezzlement to take place.

      Does Southern theater command NEED to have its own naval yard capable of constructing carriers? No, but having one means they get a % of the construction budget and don't have to rely on (i.e. pay) Eastern theater command for maintenance & offer kickbacks to their cronies. A couple months later: Does Eastern theater command NEED to produce the ability for China to build 2 carriers at once in Jiangnan shipyard? Also no. But again, having it means the PLAGF/PLAAF/PLAN heads in that theater command get as much opportunities to skim and embezzle money, far more than a Russian general selling the electric wiring out of his T-72s.

      And that's why the PLA's corruption isn't the same as Russian military corruption-a corrupt PLA officer doesn't need to hawk equipment or pimp out his soldiers, because he can get far more money by playing the convoluted procurement system.

      https://i.imgur.com/z7pZtkQ.jpg

      To close this off, just as China is more of a continental civilization under a singular state more than it is a country, the PLA truly is its own little isolated world within the PRC and CCP. The sheer size of the Chinese military and its bureaucracy resembles a big-tent political party giving off the illusion of a unified grand plan but concealing a chaotic storm of corrupt infighting within the command structure that in many ways both heavily damages and actually STRENGTHENS the PLA. Yes, more and better capabilities are introduced, but solely via the need to skim and ‘redistribute’ money.

      I guess it’s pretty funny in the end that the best indication that the PLA has been getting more competent and modern is the fact that they’ve started to copy American and Japanese-style military corruption instead of Russian-style corruption.

      I'm not calling (You) a liar but do you have any sources for all of this?

  2. 1 year ago
    War against Vietnam

    Thus when he assumed Supreme Leader status, Deng began a long, grinding high intensity twelve-year border war with the Vietnamese from 1979 to 1991. The usual procedure was for a random Chinese army group to deploy, fire several thousand rounds of mortar and artillery, fight to gain possession of 2-3 large Vietnamese hills, be assessed by Deng’s hand-picked commissars (remember comrade, the Party controls the gun; the gun does not control the Party) then rotate off the line in regular shifts, in order to expose areas of corruption within the officers’ ranks and the need for improvements with real combat experience.

    Deng Xiaoping called it ‘pinching the Tiger’s ass’ and for the most part, it worked. Many Chinese officers that had inflated their rosters with fake soldiers and equipment to steal funds were exposed. Most notably 2 of the 4 regimental COs of the PLA 31st Division were dismissed and gulag’ed for selling artillery shells on the black market and Deng also introduced a decree stating that men who were confirmed to be good-standing Vietnam combat vets were to always be given more special considerations for promotion to prevent the Central Military Commision getting top heavy with desk jockeys, hence why many of the heads of the present-day PLA are former Vietnam border war grunts.

    Chinese field tactics, command structure, combined-arms ops and the success of their individual offensives gradually became more and more competent to the point where they could push PAVN forces off of any given hill more or less at will by 1984. One PLA army group commander who was a veteran of Korea wrote that it was the first time in his career
    where he finally no longer had to worry about artillery ammo arriving on time. Putting an ineffective military through a conflict exposes any issues in leadership or equipment very quickly and in China’s case it started both the modernization process of the PLA and also its culture of its corruption.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >be assessed by Deng’s hand-picked commissars
      fricking bullshit again.
      You think the Chairman of the CMC handpicks regimental commanders?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Do you not know the difference between a commissar and a commander?
        Don't post in a thread you know nothing about, just read and learn.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          what do you think the difference is back in 79?
          what were the PLA ranks back then? Go ahead, I'll wait.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Sending a problematic military to battle knowing full well how shit they are to weed out & remove corrupt officers.

      There is something very Chinese about this.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Pretty sure that happened numerous times during the Three Kingdoms period or something.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Quite impressive if true, and also confirms my fears that China isn't as incompetent as Russia is.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >and also confirms my fears that China isn't as incompetent as Russia is
        they never were. Red China was economically moronic beyond belief but were never slouches when it came to warfare, and despite copious amounts of corruption have a real desire to learn from mistakes in regards to military matters.

        Deng needed to punish Vietnam somehow, cuck the Soviets out of influence, and modernize the PLA, so he more or less made every PLA officer from the Divisional level on down in the worst military districts prove that they were in good enough shape to be able to take a hill using combined-arms warfare against a Soviet bloc enemy. A ton of raw Chinese grunts also got a real taste of what being In The Shit was like. Three birds killed with one stone.

        China during the 1979 performed very poorly, but the prolonged smaller border conflict they maintained was a constant live-fire treasure trove of new experience, technology, tactics, strategem, and logistics which they maintained learning all they could from it until 1992, when the USSR had imploded in private and China's justification for continuing the war dried up. If you read translated PLA reports or even military magazines in detail, officers have scrutinized every last detail of every battle thoughly and debate them endlessly.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I guess they really made it sure that something like the warlord era wouldn't happen ever again.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          You should however remember that fighting a low-intensity conflict does not necessarily prepare you for a big one.

          Remember Syria? Russia tried using it as a training ground to get officers operational experience with combined arms. Arguably they succeeded, but the experience was in beating up an inferior enemy that had no real means to counter anything except the ground component of a given operation (and that was generally the syrian military - russian commanders didn't really get to lead russian troops into ground battles). This probably left a lot of officers with expectations mismatched with the reality on the ground in Ukraine (HIMARS, anyone?).

          The knowhow gained was also stuck largely at the tactical and operational level. At strategic and doctrinal level there appears to have been no lessons learned and no new ideas developed. I would argue that the russian military has failed entirely at developing a sound strategy for ukraine - and their inability to do so could have been revealed if they had tried to *win* the war in syria, instead of just keeping it going, propping up their client state.

          I suspect that chinese military has hit similar pitfalls with Vietnam. No doubt they've gained a lot at the tactical and operational level, but I doubt "go take a hill" has taught them anything useful about strategy. Moving the officers who'd shown competence in those operations up the ladder probably has helped, but ultimately the only way to test the soundness of your ideas on how to conduct war at scale is fighting that war.

          tl;dr: I argue that whatever competence chinese demonstrated in vietnam only applies at operational/tactical level, and their competence at the strategic level remains unproven and unknown. Russian experience in Ukraine has demonstrated clearly that the soundness of a strategy is difficult to predict until it is applied in action.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The US military is far more corrupt than the PLA.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Nice try

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        It's true. Almost every piece of US equipment could be made for half the cost or even 75% of the cost. US troops are frequently sent to guard capitalist business interests rather than real US geopolitical goals. And US generals are all yes men who are more focused on divisive diversity politics than anything resembling military strategy or troop readiness.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Not with the same quality

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >guard capitalist business interests rather than real US geopolitical goal
          Same thing my dude

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Yeah, Iraq was really dangerous to the US.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              well, the major part was
              1: Iraq had for the better part of two decades been destabilizing the region
              2: Iraq had on more than one occasion invaded a neighbor state in a war of aggression, in the case of '91 being kuwait
              3: Iraq was a sponsor of international terrorism under Saddam and Iraqi-backed groups committed several attacks that killed american citizens
              4: Iraq was procuring WMDs (of the wrong type) and possessed what was thought of at the time as a very large, very dangerous military

              things aren't always as cut and dry as 'MIC capitalist cronyism"

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Iraq had for the better part of two decades been destabilizing the region
                that's the US
                >Iraq had on more than one occasion invaded a neighbor state in a war of aggression, in the case of '91 being kuwait
                but you supported their war with Iran
                >Iraq was a sponsor of international terrorism under Saddam and Iraqi-backed groups committed several attacks that killed american citizens
                Pretty sure Iraqi sponsored terrorism killed less Amerimutts than that Iranian airliner you shot down.
                >Iraq was procuring WMDs (of the wrong type) and possessed what was thought of at the time as a very large, very dangerous military
                lying again, mutt?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >that's the US
                and everybody else, but Iraq was being particularly blunt and violent about it
                >but you supported their war with Iran
                correct, nobody was happy about it
                >pretty sure that(...)
                during Saddam's reign various Iraqi-backed terrorist groups and Iraq itself killed over 70 americans as well as hundreds from nations allied to the United States
                >lying again
                Do you dispute that Iraq procured and stored chemical weapons?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                It was a war for oil profits you numbnut frick, we are still waiting for those WMD's that never existed

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >it was a war for oil profits
                which resulted in the united states returning the Kuwaiti oilfields back to kuwait, the United states buying Kuwaiti oil, and directly competing with US-produced oil? That doesn't sound very profitable anon.
                >never existed
                You mean Saddam never had sarin and mustard gas stockpiled? Awfully strange how the US managed to accidentally strike and subsequently poison its own soldiers with a mix of airborne chemical agents in 2003 if there weren't any there to accidentally release.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >You mean Saddam never had sarin and mustard gas stockpiled?
                Chemical weapons have a shelf life. And let's not forget about pic fricking related.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                the original statement was about "WMDs (the wrong kind)", anon. I'm not claiming the Iraqis had nukes, we know it's not true. I'm arguing that the invasion of Iraq hinged on more than just oil and the ghost of nukes and was rather the culmination of several decades of geopolitical events.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                America invaded Iraq under false pretenses, yes or no?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                the United States invaded Iraq with the intent to solve a long-standing geopolitical sore spot with a public pretense of preemptive neutralization of potential WMDs, of which evidence for was either nonexistent or shaky at best.

                I don't see what this has to do with the iraq war being about oil or not anon, it sounds like you have a bone to pick and are following a tangent.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >invaded Iraq with the intent to solve a long-standing geopolitical sore spot
                and instead gave birth to ISIS

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Don't move the goalposts Chang

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Why are you conflating aspects of two separate wars to suit your bullshit spiel and ignoring the parts that don't suit?

                I'm guessing you weren't even born for the second one, not a single rational person believed the WMD shit and the US government went on a whirlwind diplomatic tour to pressure other countries into allowing the UN resolution based on phony WMDs to pass, buy threatening to withhold aid, trade deals and other vague bad things that would happen in the future if they went against it.
                They have since admitted they never believed it themselves, and their argument was that Saddam was about unleash biological weapons around the world in a doomsday scenario, not that he had some rusty barrels of WW1 bullshit lying around that he openly used throughout the 80s and were not a secret or a threat anyway.

                Why would you still try to peddle such a confused and obviously false narrative 20 years later?
                Accept the fact that the USA launches illegal wars of aggression under false pretenses in order to gain combat experience and line rich peoples pockets and stop living in a fantasy world.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                All i'm hearing in this post is "I'm angry at the united states and can't think of any reasonings outside of oil and muh MIC"

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Nice rebuttal, but I actually think the US is the best bad guy we have and far more preferable to China or Russia, I'm actually angry at morons like you who spew uneducated bullshit and don't have a clue what they are talking about since they were merely a malformed spermatozoa rolling around some methheads balls in a trailer park when the events in question took place.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >but I actually think the US is the best bad guy we have
                looking less and less "best"
                >and far more preferable to China or Russia
                Russia is pretty shit but I trust China more than mutts 9 times out of 10.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous
              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                All valid but derpchan is a hapa contrarian moron, he'll never accept your arguments no matter how sound they are.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >hapa
                they're insulated from the sheer hatred asians have for them by the tolerance of Americans, so Americans get the brunt of their complaining - ironically this means hapas often have this delusion of asian moral superiority over "western imperialists" while actual asians would have sooner aborted them than bothered listening to their whining

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Iran Air 655 was 290 fatalities.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              The US foreign policy regarding "useful dictators" has always been to make use of them until they've outlasted their usefulness, then try to topple them to install democracy.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                No. Toppling them by installing a more controllable puppet. That is the goal, it often doesnt work. Like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan. Democracy is just a tool and somehow rarely translate to supporting more than the Chosen Leader.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Genuine moron especially since almost all US Generals and field officers are Gulf War and Iraq Veterans.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Almost every piece of US equipment could be made for half the cost or even 75% of the cost
          Not corruption, this is business

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            And that is why capitalism will fail.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              maybe if someone in the future invents a better arrangement.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Maybe someone in the past already has. Try reading theory. 🙂

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Yeah, it's in the New Testament.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Theory =/= reality. Its why Communism has and always does fail. Its why Ching Chong Bing Bongs moved away from it and adopted capitalism with more central planning.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              It's why capitalism is winning, you've got it all backwards

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                capitalism is being carried by democracy

                capitalism is a scorpion - it remains to be seen whether or not democracy is a turtle or a frog

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >capitalism is being carried by democracy
                This is very true. It was a tragic mistake to believe that capitalism would necessarily and spontaneously lead to democracy, and Russia especially suffered for it.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >capitalism is being carried by democracy
                This is very true. It was a tragic mistake to believe that capitalism would necessarily and spontaneously lead to democracy, and Russia especially suffered for it.

                >It is now often said that democracy will not tolerate “capitalism.” If “capitalism” means here a competitive system based on free disposal over private property, it is far more important to realize that only within this system is democracy possible. When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.
                Check out The Road to Serfdom

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          i remember some scandal when it turned out paper cups cost $12 a piece for the military

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      0.50 cents

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Yes and no. Corruption in the US is legal. It's not legal in China. Happens quite frequently in both countries.

      0.50 cents

      You don't even know how your tax dollars are spent, lol.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The PLA had to make its own unique round calibre to stop its quartermasters from selling off ammunition.

  4. 1 year ago
    War against Vietnam

    This isn’t to say that more low-grade corruption is gone entirely. It wasn’t and still isn’t, but it has been greatly diminished enough that it largely shifted the PLA’s corruption culture. China’s post Mao economic boom was when the PLA shifted its corrupt practices away from the more primitive Russian style, to a sort of financial greed that I can only conclude is a combination of modern Western militaries and Imperial Japan. Namely, that the dominant aspect of PLA corruption is now procurement fund skimming amidst a newly-emerging interservice rivalry.

    One thing to keep in mind: the PLA has traditionally been dominated by the Ground forces with the Air Force, Navy etc being subordinate to the Army, but have of late shifted to a point where the PLAAF, PLAN and even other minor branches have leverage and ability to squabble on an equal footing over funding with the Army.

    So within the PLA now, what we see is actually quite similar to Imperial Japan during the Meiji era. The Imperial Jap Army and Navy famously bickered with each other over everything and insisted on having each other’s capabilities, which resulted in them both having their own entirely separate air forces, infantry divisions of Navy personnel and submarines/aircraft carriers crewed by the Army, with the larger goal of securing more and more of the state budget for themselves.

    It’s a lot of the same shit in the modern PLA; the brass aims to make money and expand their own relevance by bloating the procurement system. Within the PLA different branches will go through parallel development of the same capabilities, sometimes even with the same platforms. However the reasoning isn't so much the Jap mindset of "oh we don't trust the other branches can do it because WE’RE the most important force," but more along the more Western lines of "we wanna do the same thing they can, but we need more money for that Mr. President"-all so they can inflate their own budgets.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >submarines/aircraft carriers crewed by the Army
      wat

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Akitsu_Maru

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      It's eternally hilarious to me that China turned into Imperialist Japan, right down to the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere rhetoric.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >The Imperial Jap Army and Navy famously bickered with each other over everything and insisted on having each other’s capabilities, which resulted in them both having their own entirely separate air forces, infantry divisions of Navy personnel and submarines/aircraft carriers crewed by the Army, with the larger goal of securing more and more of the state budget for themselves.
      False.
      Go read PLA orbat.
      PLAAF is not a subordinate branch of the PLA. PLANAF is, however, a subordinate branch of the PLAN.

      >It’s a lot of the same shit in the modern PLA; the brass aims to make money and expand their own relevance by bloating the procurement system.
      Not just the brass. Every palm gets greased.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The ZTQ-15 is probably the best recent example of this because it’s the most blatant example of all four PLA branches squaring off for more Yuan.

    It starts off with the Ground Forces saying they’re going to develop a lightweight and fast tank for the mountainous Tibetan plateau. Fair enough, a perfectly valid need. The Central commission approves development and procurement.

    Then the Navy comes along and says that it’s also going to procure them, even though they already have more than one amphibious 105-mm gun platform, and justifies this by saying that eastern Taiwan has mountains and also we can deliver these across oceans better.

    Then the Air Force, not wanting to be left out of the party, announces that it’s also going to procure them in order to form air assault brigades which can be deployed faster than either the Army or Navy.

    Next thing you know more than 400 ZTQ15s are built in 3 years and spread across 3 branches. Western analysts look at this and conclude that the PLA is making their expeditionary forces more lethal and capable but all that’s really happening is that the branches are just angling for more money. Yes, at the end of the day, they developed a platform that IS usable across all three branches, branch heads can now present the report to the CMC to claim they achieved "joint operational capabilities"-but it was never driven by a need to actually enable joint ops.

    Within the PLA there’s plenty of room for the top brass to skim money from the procurement budget with… creative accounting. If you can justify that your branch needs more money, then that's another potential area where you can keep some cash for yourself. And with the creation of the theater command system that aims to fully unify the branches under a single chain of command, it creates even more opportunity for this kind of embezzlement to take place.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Does Southern theater command NEED to have its own naval yard capable of constructing carriers? No, but having one means they get a % of the construction budget and don't have to rely on (i.e. pay) Eastern theater command for maintenance & offer kickbacks to their cronies. A couple months later: Does Eastern theater command NEED to produce the ability for China to build 2 carriers at once in Jiangnan shipyard? Also no. But again, having it means the PLAGF/PLAAF/PLAN heads in that theater command get as much opportunities to skim and embezzle money, far more than a Russian general selling the electric wiring out of his T-72s.

      And that's why the PLA's corruption isn't the same as Russian military corruption-a corrupt PLA officer doesn't need to hawk equipment or pimp out his soldiers, because he can get far more money by playing the convoluted procurement system.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      And what problem do you have with the ZTQ-15? It is actually the best tank that the chinks have in their arsenal since they finally replaced the suicidal carousel autoloader with a bustle autoloader which is safer and the new 105mm APFSDS penetrator rods can also be made much longer than the equivalent Soviet 125mm because It's a one piece ammo.
      Its higher power to weight ratio and the higher horse power engine means that It has plenty of room for improvement in the near future with APS, more armour modules & ERA or even lasers to shoot down drones

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    To close this off, just as China is more of a continental civilization under a singular state more than it is a country, the PLA truly is its own little isolated world within the PRC and CCP. The sheer size of the Chinese military and its bureaucracy resembles a big-tent political party giving off the illusion of a unified grand plan but concealing a chaotic storm of corrupt infighting within the command structure that in many ways both heavily damages and actually STRENGTHENS the PLA. Yes, more and better capabilities are introduced, but solely via the need to skim and ‘redistribute’ money.

    I guess it’s pretty funny in the end that the best indication that the PLA has been getting more competent and modern is the fact that they’ve started to copy American and Japanese-style military corruption instead of Russian-style corruption.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >I guess it’s pretty funny in the end that the best indication that the PLA has been getting more competent and modern is the fact that they’ve started to copy American and Japanese-style military corruption instead of Russian-style corruption.
      This honestly seems like a sound explanation. People don't realize that the complexity of institutions ultimately acts as both a curse and a blessing (for the institution, if not the people dependent on it). The more complex any given institution becomes, the slower and more inefficient it becomes, but it also becomes able to fulfill more roles and accumulates more people within its ranks, allowing its leadership to accumulate more political steam, similar to what you're describing with the Chinese air force and Navy. A simple institution may be more efficient and cost less, but that also makes it easier to replace. With a complex institution, its exact nature and roles become more opaque to outsiders, making replacing it much more of a challenge, since you don't know exactly what you're getting rid of, or what you'll need to replace it with.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        A simpler institution also enables a more direct and arbitrary form of subordination, hence why you see the Russian style of corruption in less advanced countries like in Africa.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Does that kind of competition within the military provide some kind of checks and balances between each force? It seems harmless enough that the political side would just leave them alone most of the time.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    What does a political comissar even do in the year of our lord 2022?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      parallel chain of command. Chinese brigade command staff is pretty lean. The commissars are not just political officers in the PLA. You gotta remember how the command structure was very egalitarian until recently.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >What does a political comissar even do in the year of our lord 2022?
      Their number one priority would be to prevent unauthorised coups.
      Under some circumstances it might be to facilitate a coup.
      It's mostly about ensuring rank & file obey officers and officers are more loyal to the party and the chairman than their superiors. This is their day-to-day task.

      A secondary task is to monitor and report corruption, foreign influence and/or spying, indoctrinate troops, stuff like that.

      well, the major part was
      1: Iraq had for the better part of two decades been destabilizing the region
      2: Iraq had on more than one occasion invaded a neighbor state in a war of aggression, in the case of '91 being kuwait
      3: Iraq was a sponsor of international terrorism under Saddam and Iraqi-backed groups committed several attacks that killed american citizens
      4: Iraq was procuring WMDs (of the wrong type) and possessed what was thought of at the time as a very large, very dangerous military

      things aren't always as cut and dry as 'MIC capitalist cronyism"

      >things aren't always as cut and dry as 'MIC capitalist cronyism"
      MIC capitalist cronyism and a just war aren't mutually exclusive. Congress luuuuurves it when the two stars align, it's a lobbyist picnic.

      >Iraq had for the better part of two decades been destabilizing the region
      that's the US
      >Iraq had on more than one occasion invaded a neighbor state in a war of aggression, in the case of '91 being kuwait
      but you supported their war with Iran
      >Iraq was a sponsor of international terrorism under Saddam and Iraqi-backed groups committed several attacks that killed american citizens
      Pretty sure Iraqi sponsored terrorism killed less Amerimutts than that Iranian airliner you shot down.
      >Iraq was procuring WMDs (of the wrong type) and possessed what was thought of at the time as a very large, very dangerous military
      lying again, mutt?

      >but the US did it too
      So? We're talking about why the US invaded Iraq. The US isn't going to invade itself for doing the same thing, that would be stupid.

      Kuwait was a US ally/client-state, invading it was unauthorised and utterly outrageous by almost any standard. There was some slight provocation but nothing that justified annexing a whole country. If Saddam had of annexed the border-region oil-field and let the West know that it was remaining open for business, or just blown up the facilities, there probably wouldn't have been any kind of war at all.

      >Almost every piece of US equipment could be made for half the cost or even 75% of the cost
      Not corruption, this is business

      >Not corruption, this is business
      That's legally true but we both know that the MIC is a corrupt business. This is why we say that the USA has legalised corruption that remains illegal in China.

      Chinese corruption is a bit more efficient than USA military procurement I think, the skimming is more tightly regulated by senior party officials and if it gets out of hand, they don't mind sending someone to house arrest and seizing their companies.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Why would you talk about the US in a thread about China?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      mutts must perpetually make everything about themselves.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >says chang fuming as he dumps his burger folder

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      a certain oriental individual just can't stop seething

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        dis you mutt?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          your silly insults only make it obvious that you've been found as hollow and the american was right.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          god i wish, I'm only a bargain-sized american

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >motorized wheelchairs have that much fricking power behind them
          >AND it's carrying some obese whale like thing

          god damn bless the US

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Thanks for the interesting text, OP.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >political commisar
    We are off to a great start

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Not a bad thread, OP. Nice to see someone has something to tell for once that is more complex than a oneliner. Keep up the good work.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >t. OP

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This is all interesting to read but I very distinctly remember reading of Russia and China doing wargames with each other in the late 2000's and early 2010's and the Russians saying the Chinese were a joke. I hope that sinks in given recent events.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >but I very distinctly remember reading of Russia and China doing wargames with each other in the late 2000's and early 2010's and the Russians saying the Chinese were a joke
      i would agree with the Russians until about 2011 after which there's nothing the Russian military can/could do that the PLA couldn't do better.
      i also think there's a bit of mutual trash talk. PLAN officers referred to Russian AK630 CIWSs as 'jellybean launchers,' that they were useless as shit and the PLAN needed to replace all of its AK630s with something else quickly.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    how accurate is this? https://youtu.be/-5hENyRScto
    chinese military so corrupt that jinpeng had to do a full clean up, officers would write 100 artillery shells used for training when in reality 10 was used and the rest sold, lots of this shit went on and they are still struggling.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >chinese military so corrupt that jinpeng had to do a full clean up
      Chinese media shows what the Chinese state wants to be shown and the Chinese state wants to show Xi Jinping taking drastic means to root out corruption. The fact that that YouTuber doesn’t take Chinese state media with a grain of salt is a little laughable.

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