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This is the third part of a series of posts where I examine what would happen if the PRC invaded Taiwan. For deep background, check out my book on Chinese military history, Walls of Men.

In my previous installment, I focused on the personnel side of the PLA, but upon reflection, I think and even deeper dive needs to be made that highlights some of the fundamental cultural and political differences between the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China.  Put simply, they are not even close to being the same, and the nature of these difference is hugely important in assessing Chinese military capability.

A People vs an Empire

The first and most important distinction is that while the Russians are a definable people with a common history, language and religion, China is an empire.  Yes, the dominant ethnic group is Han Chinese, but this category is so broad as to be meaningless.  As countless people who have been to China can attest (and have shared online), there is immense variability within the Han people.  Northern China is not the same as Southern China.  The diet and customs of the Yellow River valley are not the same as those in the Yangtze River valley.  

Without a strong central government, China falls apart.  Russia does not have this problem.  Yes, the ethnic minorities in peripheral regions may break away, but the core Russian state does not need a government to keep it from falling apart.  Indeed, one of the ongoing sources of instability in and around Russia is the way Soviet-era boundaries were drawn with an eye to planting Russian minorities in various regions to keep them from breaking away.  It didn’t work, but it has created instability because many of those Russians want their areas to be absorbed into a Greater Russia.

A Political Revolution vs a Cultural One

When the Bolsheviks took over the Russian Empire, they set about building a new society, sweeping away past traditions in the cause of building a New Man who would rule according to the principles of “scientific socialism.”  The implementation of this vision was a very bloody affair and in the decades that followed, millions of people were imprisoned and/or killed to try to create heaven on earth.

Yet for all that effort, the various peoples under Soviet rule retained their fundamental identities. The Russian language got some new turns of phrase and expressions, but it remained intact.  Cities were renamed, and churches were often torn down, but Russian cultural heritage was preserved and in a strange sense democratized.  A great emphasis was in fact placed on celebrating Russian history and sharing classical music and ballet.  For all that they were Communists, the leadership still carried an ethnic grudge against the West and wanted to demonstrate that they were revolutionary but also highly cultured, and their musicians and dancers were the best in the world.

The military consequence of this continuity was that the state arsenals continued to operate and continued to produce the same weapons to the same standard, which was generally pretty good.  The Soviets placed a very high priority on science and industrial advancement, and so while intellectuals were subject to ideological purges, the technical fields like weapons production were largely spared.  In fact, Soviet arms designers were some of the best in the world, pioneering select-fire small arms, tank development and the military use of rocketry.  As any Russian will tell you, the Soviets put a satellite in orbit before anyone else, and the first man in space was a Cosmonaut, not an Astronaut.

The story was very different in China.  Whereas the Russia Revolution was primarily about political and economic structures, Mao Zedong sought to transform Chinese society in a far more radical and fundamental way.  The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution shredded the very fabric of Chinese society.  Mao did not just want a New Man, he wanted new everything, resetting the calendar to “year zero” and discarding everything that had gone on before.  To do this, all existing structures and knowledge had to be wiped out, and so the universities were gutted, their libraries burned and the educated were sent to labor camps.

What this meant in military terms was that arms production cratered, and quality control collapsed.  What few experts in the field that China possessed were demoted and sent out into the fields or forced to work on the line.  In this environment, about the best the PLA could hope for was derivate designs with minor changes to reflect local materials and methods.

The madness eventually subsided, but Chinese weapons technology and manufacturing were arguably set back to 1930s levels of competency.  China as a whole regressed during Mao’s lifetime.  Far from “dragging China out of poverty,” he had increased it, inflicting massive destruction on families, farms, factors and society as a whole.  

Mao’s Marxist Heresy

Mao’s brand of Communism differed greatly from orthodox Marxism-Leninism, which assumed that a necessary precondition for the revolution was industrialization.  As a result, the Chinese Communists tried to create revolutions in the few industrialized cities, but the workers were not sympathetic.  As I wrote in Walls of Men:

The repeated failures of these revolutions convinced Mao Tse-tung that an alternative approach was needed, one suited to China’s primarily agrarian society and also its propensity for peasant uprisings.  If these could be taken out of a local context and channeled into a single cause, it could dominate the country.
Maoism was in fact the precise inversion of what was going on in the Soviet Union.  The Soviets exalted industrial workers and treated the peasantry as reactionaries with a particular dislike of affluent peasants – the infamous Kulaks.  In China, wealthy peasants were the first to be won over by the Communists since their resources could then be used to build armed cadres which further spread revolutionary sentiment.

The most hallowed traditions of the PLA celebrate their origins as a peasant militia and this legacy makes them a very different animal than the Soviet Red Army. The PLA has tried to modernize and it certainly has flashy equipment, but it is an open question how they have reconciled their guerilla history with modern combined arms doctrine.

The Quality Gap

The Soviet Union had plenty of problems with corruption and ineptitude, but in general, the military-industrial complex remained competent and professional, specifically in terms of arms production.  Even during the nadir of World War II, the Soviets produced functional and effective equipment.  Part of the reason for this was their emphasis on absolute simplicity of design, wise use of materials, and ease of maintenance.  From submachineguns to the later AK series of rifles, Soviet gear was rugged and durable, designed for hard use.  The Soviets particularly valued artillery, and its employment was a key part of Soviet doctrine.  In addition, Soviet industrial policy was all about maximized, standardized products produced on a vast scale.

Communist China has also industrialized and much of the world’s manufacturing has relocated there, but none of the technology is indigenous.  Western companies moved there purely to lower costs and boost profits, and China exploited this to copy their technology.  However, the supply shock of Covid combined with the loss of key industrial capabilities has caused many businesses to reconsider this policy and instead move operations back into their own countries.

One of the factors in the decision to “re-shore” is the increasingly uneven quality control standards.  The term “tofu dreg” refers to the widespread practice of cutting corners and lowering quality in a bid to make more profits.  It is particularly bad in the construction industry, where roads, bridges and buildings are built that look sturdy, but are in practice quite fragile and prone to failure or collapse.  There are dedicated channels on Youtube that document the amazing lengths to which Chinese manufacturers will go to in order to produce cheap goods.  Is it beyond the realm of possibility that military contractors might not also boost their profits by cutting corners?

In fact, there are reports that the actual equipment issued to the troops is of very poor quality and often defective.  This is difficult to document because of the secrecy that surrounds the PLA, and also the fact that junior enlisted men who complain would face harsh punishments.  Given other corruption scandals in the military (filling missiles with water rather than liquid rocket fuel, siphoning gas out of trucks), it is not hard to believe that much of China’s equipment is designed for display rather than field use.

The Soviets also had parade-only gear and loved filling the sky with jets and Red Square with tanks on May Day, but they had a gritty side to them that modern China simply does not seem to possess.  To put it another way, Soviets were also corrupt, but at their core, the Russians loved Russia, whatever the flag was.  Russians hate and fear the world around them and therefore take weapons seriously.  Far more seriously than the Chicoms seem to do.