Beijing takes ‘war lessons’ from Russia’s military tactics in Ukraine
The performance of Russian troops on the ground may have come as a surprise to China’s People’s Liberation Army
As Russia’s military might struggles in the face of Ukrainian resistance, China’s People’s Liberation Army is watching events on the ground with particularly close attention.
For the PLA, the Russian operations — which Beijing refuses to call an invasion — are live lessons in the kind of warfare Chinese troops have not experienced in almost half a century. Beijing fears that, not having been in real combat since the 1979 border war with Vietnam, its military is suffering from ‘peace disease’, a lack of battlefield experience and fighting spirit.
For decades, Chinese military scholars and analysts have therefore been studying conflicts around the world looking for ‘Chinese lessons from other people’s wars’, as a landmark book published a decade ago called it.
Those lessons have included the importance of air campaigns as demonstrated by the US in the 1991 Gulf war, the use of missiles to knock out an adversary’s command and control or air defence systems in various US military operations, and a variety of operations in the 1999 Kosovo war.
“The Chinese military has made a significant effort to look at the modern conflicts involving the US or Russia,” said Ian Burns McCaslin, an expert on the PLA’s emulation of foreign militaries who is now enrolled in a PhD programme at Tamkang University in Taipei. “We know they looked at the Russian experience in the conflict in Syria, and we can expect them to look at Ukraine as well.”
The PLA has built the observation of other militaries’ practices into its training and exercise regimes. It has set up a programme for creating forces “intended to imitate potential adversaries,” according to a paper he co-authored.
According to Chinese military scholars, a war involving Russian troops could hold more important lessons than any other conflict.
“Our armed forces were formed after the example of the Soviet Union’s armed forces, we have for a long time been acquiring most of our weapons from Russia, and we are engaged in close military exchanges with Russia,” said a retired PLA officer at the Academy of Military Sciences who requested anonymity. “A considerable number of our young officers have spent time in Russian academies, we have been exercising together and learning about each other’s command and control structures. So how they perform in battle is very relevant to us.”
Given these close links, some of the events on the ground in Ukraine might have come as a shock. According to information released by the Ukrainian side and by the US government, Russia’s ground forces appear to have run into severe problems with communications and logistics. Convoys of armoured vehicles are said to have run out of fuel, Russian soldiers have been left stranded not knowing directions, and key Russian equipment such as Pantsir anti-aircraft missile trucks have been abandoned by their crews.
For Beijing, which has had an ambivilant attitude towards the war in Ukraine, this is potentially alarming. Russia’s involvement in conflicts over the past 15 years, such as the 2008 Georgia war, its 2014 invasion of Crimea and the war in Syria, created the impression that its forces were highly organised. China has even modelled part of its military structure on the Russian example. Under the latest round of military reforms, which President Xi Jinping kicked off in 2015, he created the Strategic Support Force, in charge of space, cyber and electronic warfare, tasked with helping other branches of the military with navigation and communications.
“The establishment of the PLA Strategic Support Force seems to have been inspired by the Russian model,” Major General Mandip Singh, an Indian retired army general, wrote in a paper on how the PLA has been learning from Russia. “China’s military officers and strategists continue to be schooled in Russian thinking on ‘new generation warfare’ and have identified the Russian strategy as a key battle-winning factor.”
Xi also followed Putin’s example in concentrating command powers in the hands of the top military leader.
Russian ground troops’ communications troubles in Ukraine highlight the risks of a centralised command structure on the battlefield as it can leave soldiers helpless when they are cut off. Although the PLA is experimenting with devolving more command functions to lower ranks in exercises, analysts observe that the Chinese Communist party’s concerns over political control and loyalty is hindering that process.
Military experts caution that it is too early to draw conclusions. “It is vital for us to observe the operation in Ukraine, but everything will be judged based on success or failure of the operation in the end,” said the Chinese military researcher.