I have read some Chinese accounts of the Korean War and I see some light on what happened during that war. The more generous account in Western accounts indicate that the Chinese troops focussed on breaking through the South Korean and weaker UN nations lines and then outflanking the US troops. Considering the mountainous regions and extremely limited roads in and out, this must have worked to the Chinese tactics.
In the Chinese accounts, they did in fact focus on the weaker points and the proceed to overrun that post with all the troops lined up to exploit that breakthrough, ignoring the strong points on each side. The US accounts have indicated that they were firing on the wave of Chinese troops breaking through and the Chinese just ignored them and proceeded to penetrate deep into the rear.
This is correct. Traditional Chinese tactics emphasised avoiding the enemy fist unless absolutely necessary and hit enemy underbelly. Most famous battles in Chinese history were won through hitting enemy supply lines and decimating their logistic elements---Battle of Guan-Du a typical example. They would only meet the enemy fist face on during defensive and holding operations.
The PLA kept up with the tradition well.
In addition, these were not raw conscripts but battle hardened troops fresh from the Communist/Kuomintang/Japanese wars. In fact a substantial part of these troops were absorbed from Chiang Kai Shek's army. That was why quite a few of them when captured was quite happy to cooperate and later on refused to be repatriated.
Largely correct, except the last part. Quite a few of the POWs did not want to be repatriated, not because they were originally KMT troops, but because many feared to be regarded as traitors back home.
First of all, according to Far Eastern psychology, surrendering is already a demoralising and shameful act, an act of cowardliness. Secondly, there had been an extensive political campaign to turn those POWs for both military man-power and political propaganda gains to Taipei; agents were sent infiltrating into the POW camps; many of the POWs were told that the stories of them defecting are already told to PRC, and anti-CCP slogans etc where forcefully tattooed to POWs who still wanted to go back; and most loyal political officers and ones regarded to have significant "negative" influence mysteriously and conveniently died.
The Chinese Army was obviously short of light arms as well as heavy arms. Most soldiers do not have rifles but they do have a lot of grenades and hence they would charge a position with a many grenades. Most probably production of grenades were much simpler. In addition they have very poor supply chain and medical facilities. That limited their range and ability to completely annihilate retreating and surrounded UN troops.
They did not lack rifles. They lacked heavy weaponry. The failure to completely annihilate the retreating and surrounding UN troops was caused by many reasons, two of the most important reasons I think are
1. There was an underestimation of the strength of US forces. They worked on the assumption that a US infantry division is organisationally similar to that of a US trained and equipped KMT division, just even better trained and equipped. In the actual fact, they realised a US division is more than twice the expected size, and had far more firepower than imagined.
2. Severe winter cold, difficult terrain and supply lines. China entered the war rather hastily, in fact, without much preparation time. A lot of PVA units were units preparing for the invasion of Taiwan, ordered to go north. They had insufficient winter provisions, and insufficient experiences in handling severe winter conditions. PVA lost more troops to the elements than to actual battles. And this says it all.
Both of which, ultimately are planning errors.
Only later in the war when it was stalemate, was more conscripts exposed as the cream of the Chinese Army was decimated.
The PVA's plan relied quite heavily on the initial shock and movement. They realised early on the importance of annihilating the bulk of the US fighting force at the initial stages, when they are still close to the Chinese boarder and thus PVA supply lines shot. Latter stages when the war developed into a stalemate, and trench warfare, advantages of firepower became more apparent.
The Chinese army did loose many of its most experienced and motivated troops. But the cream certainly was not decimated. The PLA strength at the end of Chinese civil war was over 5 million. And units operating in Korea gets rotated in and out.
