Ordinary PLA infantrymen

Broccoli said:

Both Chinese and Indian land forces still get relatively little money vs other branches of the military but both also have huge numbers of men in service. I think both countries can be compared since despite all the claims about modernization it seems they still rely on throwing big numbers to the game.

It would be interesting to see what both countries landforces would look like if they dropped numbers to 400-500k... i'd imagine that at lest in PLA all obsolete equipment would disappear as they would have more money per unit.

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Biscuits said:

It's not even comparable at all.

India had a giant standing army where everyone is assumed to be used at anytime, it's similar to US army except India is more backwards.

China meanwhile is similar to SK and has a short conscription system and a professional volunteer service system. The latter would be used for conflicts such as confrontation with border intruders or anti terrorism mission. The former are around as a failsafe so that the army can grow hugely if a world war starts, and also they do national guard jobs like forest fire fighting, disaster relief etc.

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AZaz09dude said:

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AND

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Editor’s Note: One of the authors of this article is protected with a pseudonym. Regular readers of War on the Rocks know that we allow this in only the rarest of cases. Please see our

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to read more about how we make these judgments.

1st Lt. Tsugi Ohashi: “Where’s all this push-button warfare we’ve been hearin’ about?”

1st Lt. Joe Clemons: “We’re the push buttons.”

–“

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,” United Artists, 1959

The enlisted force has been the weakest link in China’s military modernization for decades, inhibiting unit readiness and operational capabilities. In the late 1990s, China’s senior military leadership decided to build a professional

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. Yet, 40 years after the Chinese military began its

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process, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) remains

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. Recent and potential future adjustments to the enlisted force are intended to correct longstanding problems and increase the PLA’s capability to perform its missions of deterrence, warfighting, and military operations other than war. However, this year’s coronavirus crisis forced the postponement of the most ambitious measure in decades, designed to lessen the adverse effects of the conscription system, thus delaying an important step toward progress. Traditional social and interpersonal relationships — which the PLA is limited in its ability to modify — will further affect whether recent personnel reforms will be successful. These personnel changes will take longer than the introduction of new weapons and technology.

Though the PLA’s latest reforms have resulted in some parallels to the U.S. military structure, the Chinese military personnel system still differs greatly from its American counterpart. This is the fundamental reason why getting into the weeds of the PLA enlisted force — and understanding the developments in its personnel system and conscription and training cycles — is crucial. In the coming decade, these changes could have major implications for strengthening the Chinese military’s operational readiness and its ability to operate beyond the mainland and China’s near seas. To better understand this evolutionary process, in the following sections we address the PLA’s personnel structure, including active-duty “civil cadre,” contract civilians, and the often-overlooked category of local government civilians responsible for recruiting the young men and women who join the PLA. We then review the composition of and developments in the conscription system and the NCO corps. Most information comes from Chinese-language sources, and a significant amount has not been published in English. In an era of

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with China, understanding the “people” of the PLA is essential in developing a strategy for how to compete — or fight.

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A potato said:

Jesus christ this article is wrong. Last time I checked PLA never used conscription in it's history. Yes there is a law but it's not enforced meaning nobody is requried to do mandetory military service.

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zhangjim said:

This reminds me of this widely circulated picture：
View attachment 95485
Why does China not adopt the compulsory military service system?
1、Which country have you seen with 600 million soldiers?
2、When my comrades had already attacked Washington, I was still at home and had not departed.
3、An infantry squad of 200000 people went to the mountain to ambush, but they occupied all the space and had no place to stand；
4、Call the roll call "Zhang Wei" (similar to Smith), and a whole division of people came out；
5、The military instructor saw the roster thicker than the dictionary and fell silent；
6、The sewing machine in the military uniform factory has begun to overheat and smoke, but the production of military uniforms for "Zhang Wei" has not been completed；
7、We sent a reconnaissance team, but the enemy thought we were launching a general attack.
8、When we started the parade, it was the naval squad that came towards us, but the army squad needed to come through next month.
9、Our cooks harvested three acres of leeks to be able to make a dumpling for the soldiers.

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Bellum_Romanum said:

Welcome back @zhangjim I may disagree with many of your opinions but your opinion brings a different perspective that shouldn't be shunned unless you're spewing gutter like nonsense.

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