Digging up an old thread, because I got into an argument on some other forum about the performance of Chinese soldiers in the Korean War.
I did a little googling to back up my arguments with some sources, and found
:
If you check the references in this paragraph, the sources are almost all American. This shows a huge disconnect between scholars/historians and the general public on the understanding of the Korean War.
Almost every lay person in the West, including many who have served in the military, believe that China had an overwhelming numerical advantage in the Korean War. In fact, the Chinese + DPRK side had roughly the same strength as the UN + ROK side. Talk to these people about the Korean War, and they invariably paint a picture of US marines holding off "hordes" of "poorly equipped and poorly trained" chinese soldiers.
In fact, this stereotype is so deeply entrenched that even today, most Westerners think that China's army is huge but antiquated, consisting of millions of ill-equipped and poorly trained drafted peasants.
As a regular visitor of sinodefenceforum.com, it was easy for me to forget just how ignorant the general public is about the Korean War and the Chinese Military.
It is a typical psychological coping mechanism to try and be-little the achievements of others when that paints yourself in a bad light in comparison.
A sense of superiority over all non-Caucasian has long been, and continues to be a core belief in almost all western cultures and countries.
Many individuals strive very hard to rise above it, but the mere fact they have to try so hard shows that such sentiment exists, and often it is so ingrained and subtle most people would not recognise it unless they were on the receiving end.
Hell, I have seen it often enough that even suggesting such a thing would be mocked as having some sort of inferiority complex, yet the people making such childish acquisitions often seem to lack the intellectual capacity to realize they have just made the point of those they thought they were mocking.
It is because of this underlying belief in their superiority that the west has found the rise of China and all of its people's accomplishments so hard to swallow, and why so many seem so instinctively hostile to it.
It is not because of communism. Most people who use that pathetic excuse does not even seem to understand what communist actually means and stands for, never mind being able to recognise that China is now far less 'communist' then many developed western European countries a lot of these same people view with great respect and not a little envy because of their greater equality and social security.
This is why most western journalists and historians take almost gleeful delight in shinning the biggest light they can possible conjure up on any perceived fault or flaw with Chinese achievements or strategies.
The reason why 'human wave' stories find so much traction in mainstream western circles is because they are desperate to find any excuse or reason to explain how a 'poorly equipped, trained and lead peasant army' that they have dismissed as a pushover for so long could not only stand up and fight them head on in major engagements, but win.
It is no co-incidence that the Korean War is also the 'forgotten war'. When the west cannot choose to ignore or forget it, it seizes on any excuse to explain their failure and humbling without actually admitting that they might have just been outfought. Because that would set them on a 'slippery slope', since there was no way they could convince even themselves that the PVA won through superior weapons or firepower, and if it turns out they didn't have a massive numerical advantage or took many times more casualties, well then, the only possible explanation left would be that Chinese generals out-thought their western counterparts, and Chinese soldiers out-fought their western counterparts with inferior weapons,equipment and with only the supplies they could carry on their backs.
Why, to admit that would be to admit that the Chinese were actually the better man during the Korean War, and that is pure heresy! And something mainstream western culture would likely not be able to fully accept in our lifetimes.
But I say, so frigging what to that?
The Chinese people knows where we started, what we have been through and what it has taken to get to where we are, and what it will take to get to where we want to be. We do not need the approval of the west to appreciate or validate our achievements.
