The Chinese Special Force Basic Training And Its Effectiveness?

Re: The Chinese Special Force Basic Trainning And Its Effectiveness??

crobato said:

I have seen some freakish things in the rurals of China. I remember visiting an old Buddist temple up the mountain, and to get up there, you need to climb a long winding steps, perhaps there are at least a few hundred steps. The exact number of steps have some mythical numerological meaning for the Buddists. So there I was going up the stairs with my camera and this old lady passed me. On her shoulders she had this big wooden bar and suspended on the bar are two plastic paint sized pails filled with rice. I have a good idea how heavy is a sack of rice, and this old lady is speedily going up the steps with two pails of rice. And that is not all, there is this old guy behind her with two pails of rice hung across the bar over his shoulder, keeping up with her. Obviously both are supplying rice to the temple monks.

The rural people are all like that, they live and carry things like this as part of their daily lives whether the sun is steaming hot or the winds are chilly cold. The people look skeletal but their lean thin muscles look like they're made of steel fiber.

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Your right, when I went on Huashan I saw these villagers carrying this stuff and climbing it like it was just an easy walk! I'm sure all of our native chinese people here know how notorious Haushan is in China

Here's a link to read about the mountain:


But the pictures are priceless

Re: The Chinese Special Force Basic Trainning And Its Effectiveness??

swimmerXC said:

Your right, when I went on Huashan I saw these villagers carrying this stuff and climbing it like it was just an easy walk! I'm sure all of our native chinese people here know how notorious Haushan is in China

Here's a link to read about the mountain:

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But the pictures are priceless
[qimg]http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn98/pholing/P1010408.jpg[/qimg]
[qimg]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/199/481381689_30d69c8c98.jpg[/qimg]
[qimg]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2103/2183621457_35ba53a71b.jpg?v=0[/qimg]
[qimg]http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/asia/images/huashan2.jpg[/qimg]

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this stuff requires a lot of technique so its not just strength and endurance. of course i am not saying that these guys have no strength.
this one time i was in China and i saw this peasant worker standing in the bus,he was wearing a short sleeve shirt and obviously holding onto a pole. i noticed that his arms arent very big. just as i was standing there perplexed about how these guys can handle the workload with so lil muscle strength, the bus begin turnin...and this is when i see the guy's bicep starts to swell like MAD,it looked like he's been workin out for a looong time (well,he prolly has)
so sometimes when you see really skinny Chinese construction workers,just remember:they only look skinny...they've been doing this stuff for years LOL

Re: The Chinese Special Force Basic Trainning And Its Effectiveness??

Slow-twitch muscle doesn't look big, but it can be just as strong and longer in endurance than fast-twitch muscle, which looks bigger and is the goal of typical cosmetic weight training.

Re: The Chinese Special Force Basic Trainning And Its Effectiveness??

I'm a newbie and just caught this thread. Although I have no idea what's exactly involved in special forces training, it should be remembered that China can draw from a population of 1.3 billion, so one would expect that the best of the best drawn from that size population would yield some people who could take significant physical and mental abuse. ( I imagine the Chinese could give the U.S. a pretty good run for the money in this area)

Re: The Chinese Special Force Basic Trainning And Its Effectiveness??

Judgement Day said:

I'm a newbie and just caught this thread. Although I have no idea what's exactly involved in special forces training, it should be remembered that China can draw from a population of 1.3 billion, so one would expect that the best of the best drawn from that size population would yield some people who could take significant physical and mental abuse. ( I imagine the Chinese could give the U.S. a pretty good run for the money in this area)

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Remember though China military isn't achieved through conscription like other countries. Its voluntary, people decision. So even if you have this perfect soldier in the population doesn't mean he/she will be joining the military. Another factor is China military is downsizing not upsizing. So currently only the best stays. With new recruitments either being extremely good or well educated in Science and Technology. The ones being decommissioned are either put else where, security, officers etc....

Re: The Chinese Special Force Basic Trainning And Its Effectiveness??

PrOeLiTeZ said:

Remember though China military isn't achieved through conscription like other countries. Its voluntary, people decision. So even if you have this perfect soldier in the population doesn't mean he/she will be joining the military. Another factor is China military is downsizing not upsizing. So currently only the best stays. With new recruitments either being extremely good or well educated in Science and Technology. The ones being decommissioned are either put else where, security, officers etc....

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Even with a volunteer military, though you might miss some creme de la creme, with a population of that size you should still be able to land some superior talent. I do recall reading where China was following some of the western militaries and going for quality over quantity....i.e., more high tech weaponry and better trained troops. As an aside, my father was a Marine Corps machine gun platoon leader in Korea and, although he rarely mentioned what he went through, did relate that he had to fight off some Chinese human wave attacks. He also mentioned that as they overran some Chinese positions that they found that some Chinese soldiers were staked or chained to the ground in such a way that they could not retreat. Apparently, the Chinese military has come a long way since then.

Re: The Chinese Special Force Basic Trainning And Its Effectiveness??

Both stories are true. The PVA did use human wave attacks for the most critical and time sensitive objectives, but the tactic was extremely rare (though memorable for the opponents) as, believe it or not, PVA commanders were very conscious of force preservation. The PVA's main tactics can be characterized as infiltration (especially at night). Positions are approached in stealth as close as possible and attacked with grenades and submachine guns. The "shock and awe" affect of this kind of tactics, where the attackers seem to pop out not very far away, UN positions are bombarded with concussion grenades, attacks in 3:1 or higher force ratios, and usually at night, give the impression of human wave tactics (the whole point was to make the UN defenders flee and give up the point in the defensive line, so that the PVA could exploit the breakthrough). You can believe it or not, this is the PVA's perspective.

As to soldiers being chained to positions, the PVA did do this with some critical positions, especially with machine gunners. They were willing to sacrifice machine gunners to maximize enemy casualties and slow down enemy advances. Despite the very high morale of the PVA, I'm sure some of the volunteers needed extra motivation to stay.

Re: The Chinese Special Force Basic Trainning And Its Effectiveness??

RedMercury said:

Both stories are true. The PVA did use human wave attacks for the most critical and time sensitive objectives, but the tactic was extremely rare (though memorable for the opponents) as, believe it or not, PVA commanders were very conscious of force preservation. The PVA's main tactics can be characterized as infiltration (especially at night). Positions are approached in stealth as close as possible and attacked with grenades and submachine guns. The "shock and awe" affect of this kind of tactics, where the attackers seem to pop out not very far away, UN positions are bombarded with concussion grenades, attacks in 3:1 or higher force ratios, and usually at night, give the impression of human wave tactics (the whole point was to make the UN defenders flee and give up the point in the defensive line, so that the PVA could exploit the breakthrough). You can believe it or not, this is the PVA's perspective.

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This is quite a pertinent point - most accounts of the Korean war we are able to read are done by Americans - which is rather subjective. When defending a position, something may seem like a human wave, or feel overwhelming, but that doesn't mean that the Chinese commanders were actually throwing men at positions with absolute disregard for life either.

Essentially, perception can be different from reality... but indeed, in any case the Chinese military has come a long way.

Re: The Chinese Special Force Basic Trainning And Its Effectiveness??

human wave is a myth actually. the PVA had no air power to cover the troops on the ground so they only fight at night. Chinese commanders have the habit of sending small contingents around the enemy and attack from behind in coordination with the main body's frontal assault. when they do attack they use bugles and whistles to intimidate the enemy. that's why it "sounded" like they were everywhere to the americans. remember the Chinese rarely attacks during the day so to say they saw the human wave thing going is jsut absurd.

Re: The Chinese Special Force Basic Trainning And Its Effectiveness??

pla101prc said:

human wave is a myth actually. the PVA had no air power to cover the troops on the ground so they only fight at night. Chinese commanders have the habit of sending small contingents around the enemy and attack from behind in coordination with the main body's frontal assault. when they do attack they use bugles and whistles to intimidate the enemy. that's why it "sounded" like they were everywhere to the americans. remember the Chinese rarely attacks during the day so to say they saw the human wave thing going is jsut absurd.

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Human wave attacks may not be something the Chinese are proud of, but they did happen. When U.S Marines in Korea were melting the barrels on their machine guns repelling the Chinese hordes, I'd call that a human wave attack. I have a firsthand account from a Marine who was in my fathers unit that was involved in a battle where they were repelling so many Chinese that the marine said he never saw an enemy soldier actually hit the ground while they were advancing. There were so many of them that as they shot them, the enemy just "faded away" to be immediately replaced by the next line of soldiers who were immediately shot, and replaced with the next line of soldiers and so and so on. Combat was fairly close in.