This is exactly what makes me feel rather uncomfortable. Anyone who has some familiarity with military magazines - especially in countries with limited continuity in operational experience - will not struggle to find these themes as rather prominent issues. 1/ https://twitter.com/hoanssolo/status/1253463961124642817

Same goes for ‘peacetime’ military. The issue is what does that exactly mean in the PLA context? What does Chinese military view as the root causes? Being familiar with quite a few individual stories in different branches of the PLA, I’d say that career progression is an issue 2/

Nepotism, corruption, political leaning on senior leadership... all of these can one way or another being brought back to the three main themes mentioned. Yet, none of these issues can be fully addressed because it is endemic to the system. Now does that mean they can’t fight? 3/

No it doesn’t at all. The PLA has excellent units, solid seamen, fantastic hackers, savvy leaders, serious engineers, and well performing capabilities. They can give you a bloody nose, they can fight - and die for the country. It all depends on what fight one is talking about.

And there is lies the silver lining for the PLA. I don’t think that any of these issues will have a negative impact in most sub-theatre, limited conflict scenarios against smaller regional actors in the SCS. What are the issues to pay attention to then? 4/

How to prevent US intervention - political warfare, hybrid activities, and testing the operational time-reaction envelope - as it has been happening since Covid19 struck - are designed to give them data on how to make that possible. 5/

Same goes for Japan. There is not a single crisis of the last decade (not least Chinese naval and air operations in the days following the 3/11 disaster) in which the PLA hasn’t tried opportunistically to test the JSDF reaction times and capacity. 6/

My guess? PLA magazines are likely to continue to highlight what they know is an obvious problem - so that the natural attempt at doing things better is met. Will they succeed? Maybe. But in most localised scenarios I can think of it won’t really matter. What matters is: 7:

1. There is little indication of PLA getting ready for a war of attrition. 2. There is indication that the behaviour of major powers in the region affects to some extent PLA operational opportunism. 3. There is no indication current shortfalls will prevent them from fighting. End