Inside China’s People’s Liberation Army | Preparing For Dangerous Storms - Part 1 | CNA Documentary

foreign ships and foreign vessels more foreign than ever in decades what do you think about this? I think they are right, you are thinking like that. I always leave the South China Sea, for example, it's more

dangerous

than the streets of Taiwan. The foreign military is in a hurry. The presidency has said the country must prepare to face

dangerous

storms

and has tasked the military with meeting a series of goals by its centennial in 2027. US intelligence has said President C has ordered the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan in 2027. But many analysts say that nothing that specific has been ordered, so when this timeline came out it was about achieving the development of a strategic deterrence system, so this deterrence capability.

So, um, mainly I think I'm focused on getting kind of high. end Advanced capabilities that

part

icularly deter the US and some of its allies from intervening in things like nuclear things, like long-range builders, missiles, space capabilities and those are all high-end capabilities designed for great power competition , what is known is the PLA's goal for 2049, the year that marks the centenary of the founding of the People's Republic of China Situations The Chinese military began a modernization process when the presidency took power in 2013 during the 12th National People's Congress The presidency outlined its thinking on security with that presidency ordered the plan to modernize rapidly.

I think there is a prioritization of Defense in Chinese policymaking right now and I think President XI believes he can move China closer toward that goal of become a rejuvenated China. I think he sees himself personally involved in that and Secondly, of course, as tensions grow, the PLA plays a very important role in maintaining China's strength and power. Xi Jinping has a number of different characteristics when it comes to interacting with the PLA compared to his predecessors. First of all, I mean, he's much more hands-on, which means he's much more involved in the minutiae of military issues, I mean, when you look at something like, when you come and compare his previous assessments, especially Jan Zuming and enormous.

In Tao they attended important meetings, gave regular talks about how important the military is, but Xi Jinping has invested much more time and effort if you look at the amount of time he visits military installations, attends military media, etc. spent significantly more time than the huge and Tao or Jan zamin and also Xi Jinping has another title: it is the headquarters of the joint command of the central military commission, which is like a kind of more operational um command, which is very An advance very significant is that his predecessors did not have the PLA budget has grown annually for the last decade in 2014 its budget was 131 billion this year its declared defense spending is now close to 225 billion 7 more than last year this is Second only to the United States has a budget of almost $886 billion, the PLA's heavy investment, especially in recent years, confirms the idea that China considers having a strong military essential for China to achieve its national goals. and its aspirations, that is, China is not interested in simply being an economic superpower.

Increased funding for the Navy has enabled a shipbuilding campaign that rapidly expanded China's fleet according to the Pentagon's 2022 report on China's military power. The PLA has the world's largest navy and has 340 ships. of the US Navy consists of 293 ships foreign foreign YouTube foreign aircraft carriers in 1999 China refurbished an old Soviet model after purchasing it secondhand, turning it into the country's first aircraft carrier, the Liao ning. Ten years later, in 2019, they launched their first domestically produced aircraft carrier. Use ski jump ramps to launch fighter jets. By 2022, China launched its third aircraft carrier, Fujian, which was also built and designed locally.

The ship is the first in the fleet to be equipped with an electromagnetic catapult that allows aircraft to be sent in rapid succession. The aircraft carrier takes its name from Fujian, the Chinese province located just opposite Taiwan. The choice of this Its name attracted attention in just a decade China went from imitation to independent design and the production of its own advanced technology. Colonel Joe Bull witnessed the modernization of the Navy firsthand and personally coordinated large-scale naval exercises in the past. He is now retired from active duty but still represents China at international security conferences, if you ask me when was the moment when the PA Navy became a blue water Navy, I would say it was late 2008 , when PLA flotillas were sent to the Gulf of Aden for counter operations, this type of combat mission, although against pirates are actually a type of military operation that we carry out far from the Chinese coast and conduct continuous exercises and still they continue.

I myself have been the coordinator of the Chinese Navy's counterparency operation from 2009 to 2015, so I know this clearly. how big the Chinese floratin is sometimes even compared to the naval forces of the EU Atlanta or NATO. Sometimes they only have one ship working there after finishing the missions in Vaden Gulf, each time, about three months, these ships would be sold all over the world. getting acquainted with unexplored waters built in the Atlantic Ocean, be it in the Bering Sea, being in Metro training, so now it is no longer a three-month mission, so sometimes it could last even 10 months, so We are making progress in ours.

Without waging a war, I should say yes, it's not just about firepower. China also wants a smart military presidency. He has called for the military to be prepared for warfare that uses artificial intelligence, cloud computing, quantum computing and the Internet of Things for what it needs. staff so it is stepping up recruiting to attract the country's brightest Young Minds as nationalist sentiment Run High Beijing has rolled out two more

army

recruitment programs in 2023 the Chinese military is rapidly modernizing thanks to an annual military budget of 225 billion US dollars there is a Unfortunately, the

army

newspaper, the pla newspaper, stated in November 2022 that China lacks talent, especially in operators of new high-tech weapons systems, so recruiters of the Army are focusing their efforts on young graduates. no no no no children abroad Newport the pla gives priority to university students specializing in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and, according to state broadcasters CCTV, the aim is to ensure that 70 of the new recruits in 2022 have Titles. gokujima Language Ichi um should be here, it's not just about pay, it's about job security and job security is very important and also of course the importance of patriotism and nationalism itself around the world.

The strawberry generation label is often applied to those born in the 2000s in China. Stereotypes are no different. There is even a social movement describing Tang Ping's practice. It literally means to lie down. Tang Ping refers to young

people

who have no ambitions and refuse to work hard and just want to get ahead. The young

people

who enlist in the PLA, of course, are not foreign strawberries. The Pla Drive recruitment is working, but he gets them to do it. staying in the military is another matter a 2021 survey at an army unit revealed that only 35 percent of college students who completed their service in the pla wanted to remain on active duty, the percentage is even lower among those who had graduated improving the quality of personnel in the military has long been a concern of the presidencies here, he is talking to student pilots from the Air Force Aviation University is foreign foreign crazy applause recently the training is rigorous modern equipment but if The PLA is being compared to the US forces as they themselves have stated then there is another deficiency, so if the experts have said that a major weakness of the PLA is that they have not fought a war in a long time, the last time they were in active combat was in Vietnam about 40 years ago, they themselves have pointed out This is considered a weakness, how is this being addressed?

We completely understand how this type of long piece could be a disadvantage for pla training and that is why we have actually been very committed to training of all types, for example, we have a more joint training, not only if the Opioid Navy example, not only do we have joint trainees between fleets, but we also have joint exercises between different services and we have also done a lot of joint training with foreign forces, for example, over the years, Russia has always been the preferred

part

ner for joint exercises August 2021, as the pandemic rages in China, held a welcoming ceremony for Russian military equipment to participate in the international military games in Xinjiang May 2022, when Prime Minister Kishida and President Biden launched Indo-Pacific economic framework in Tokyo Russia and China participated in military exercise off the coast of Japan September 2022 Vostok military exercises were held despite the war in Ukraine December 2022 China and Russia held a naval exercise week-long live-fire joint in the East China Sea March 2023 China Russia and Iran conduct a Navy exercise near the coast of Iran.

It seems that there have been many military exercises with Russia. Because? Because the way our strategic part does it, we do a lot of exercises with Russia, but not only with Russia. own advantages due to their advancement in their weapons system due to combat experiences, yes, so actually we have a lot of bets on the learning field of the Russians, but as I said before, we also did many exercises with other armed forces of from which we have also drawn many useful lessons. China's strategic partnership with Russia is, of course, controversial for many in the world after the events in Ukraine.

Ukraine, of course, has increased that concern where we now see them not just as normal exercises that an army would do, but as something strategic that Europe needs to worry about even more because there is this link with Russia. I think what we've seen is a slow expansion of these exercises being conducted jointly in Northeast Asia, particularly both at sea and in the air and on land in the past. Generally we saw that Russia had a leading role in the first one and now we see more and more that China is taking a leading role in some of these exercises and patrols, so in that sense I think the Europeans are going to be very attentive.

Up close, there is a political signal which is that China and Russia have a strong strategic partnership, that they are a solid bloc, their friends have common goals and working against those common goals is more prohibitive, you know, confronting them both simultaneously. suggests that it implies that if someone is going to get into a war with China, they might have to deal with Russia. Furthermore, China's Foreign Minister used his annual press conference to explain the importance of China's relationship with Russia. He is changing the 4th company of the 75th Brigade. He has a practice of standing in front of an old belt during important exercises to commemorate an event that occurred 87 years ago.

This belt was worn by a PLA soldier in 1936 during the Long March, when the PLA endured death and hunger and still continued his mission. Regrouping with Mao Zedong, the Pla had suffered heavy losses under fire from the Cuomintang, which was armed with more advanced weapons imported from the United States. Tens of thousands of members of Mao's Red Army were killed, but they managed to turn the situation around later and defeat Kwa Mindang. escaped to Taiwan and established a government there are foreigners foreigners that all happened almost a century ago, but that story is still very relevant and is repeated in the pla every day foreigners Sally Juice military experts point out that there is a great emphasis on indoctrination political and ideology training in the PLA that is not found in armies without a party, ideology is basically like a belief, yes, it is almost a religious thing, so for the officers and men of the PLA it is not about fighting, but you must Know who you fight for and what you represent. because and this type of belief I would actually say is a huge advantage to your even combat capabilities because you see that if you fight for a purpose then you are much braver, yes, then you become much more powerful, yes, because you have a purpose and in life we ​​needhave a purpose, the mission of the People's Liberation Army is to protect the position and interests of the party.

This is recognized by both the POA and the party itself. It is understood that if there is a conflict of interest between the interests of the country as a whole and the Communist Party , then the PLA should side with the party if there is a conflict between the people of China, the average people and the party, then the People's Liberation Army is expected to side with the party. We already saw what that could look like. in the 10 on One incident of 1989. Our military is loyal to the country, um, of course, in the plas and since it is the party's army and therefore it is the armed wing of the Chinese communist party, in that sense It is not so surprising that there is an emphasis on party loyalty.

Party loyalty was a key message that the PLA sent during its most significant exercise to date and it was on August 4, 2022 when Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan during the exercise. PLA sent about a hundred fighter jets and bombers into the so-called Taiwanese airspace during the exercises. The Eastern Theater Command also deployed more than 10 destroyers and frigates to the waters around Taiwan overseas, so what I think I took from the exercises after Nancy. Pelosi's visit came as a willingness, of course, to act militarily in a way that China has not done for a long time and, of course, a reflection of the confidence that that gives to the PLA and its capabilities at this time Just as in 1996, the last time we saw missiles used in this way, several of the missiles failed, this time the missiles did not fail, so there is a reflection of how much more advanced the military technological capability of the PLA has become. in April 2023, when President Sai visited the US China simulated precision strikes and blockades of Taiwan the scale of this exercise was smaller compared to the August 2022 exercise the presidency has repeatedly said that reunification with Taiwan It is China's destiny and it does not mince its words, unfortunately the party has defined China in such a way that the party should be considered a failure, you know, according to the party's own verbiage, if it fails to annex Taiwan as a province of the People's Republic of China, it didn't have to be this way, but the party has defined itself in this terrible situation thanks in a desert in northwest China a missile brigade of the PLA rocket force is in a live fire drill they are firing new missiles with advanced warheads that can hit precise targets hundreds of kilometers away these men have been tasked with taking half the usual time to carry out a missile launch video mission carried out elsewhere in the desert .

China is building more than a hundred new silos for ICBMs or ICBMs, according to security analyst reports published in 2022 for years that China maintained. a minimal nuclear arsenal with only about 20 ICBMs, while Russia and the United States had thousands of nuclear warheads, this is now changing rapidly. A Pentagon report claims that China now has more than 400 nuclear warheads, roughly doubling its nuclear arsenal in just two years, and that China could have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035. Currently, what for China is a fairly large and dramatic expansion of its nuclear arsenal, I wouldn't consider it an aggressive action by China because the Chinese are starting to do it. a low level with such a small number of nuclear weapons that even with rapid expansion a large expansion will achieve only partial range with the two nuclear superpowers the US and Russia specifically China now has 400 nuclear warheads which could have 1500 by the year 2035, but the United States and Russia have more than five thousand.

That said, there are some ways in which this still raises geopolitical tensions from the point of view of most of the rest of the world. Any of those three countries has much more. Nuclear warheads are not a positive thing. China has consistently said it has a no-first-use policy. China is a proprietary country that has actually committed to this policy of not being the first to use nuclear weapons, basically in China. We believe that nuclear weapons are only for you. For deterrence purposes, you shouldn't actually use nuclear weapons, so if you have nuclear warheads that you think are enough for self-defense, then that's enough, so the question is how many are enough, that's a big question because the international situation is changing and that's why your adversaries, your competitors, the natural capabilities are also changing, so despite our much smaller nuclear arsenal, we have to make sure that they are effective and they have to evolve according to the strategies of other countries, so that we can't make it static, yes, so I understand that there are many of you know foreign media or even reports from a Pentagon that talk about China's huge increase in nuclear warheads?

They're not in a position to come and confirm or deny it, but I just want to say that if they have any kind of weapons system, make sure they can work. An ever-increasing budget, ever-increasing recruitment. Drive a continued focus on preparedness. combat, but who does China perceive as a threat, even though the presidency has never explicitly stated so? There have been a series of speeches by other Chinese leaders criticizing the United States for its actions in Taiwan its military presence in the Indo-Pacific region its security partnership with Australia India and Japan known as the Quad and its partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom United Kingdom known as August the possibility of accidents leading to escalation is increasing in May 2022, Australia's defense department said a Chinese fighter jet flew near the Australian plane and released a bundle of straw containing small pieces of aluminum that were ingested in the engine of the Australian plane in June.

Canada's military accused Chinese warplanes of both events taking place in the South China Sea and then, on December 29, 2022, the US military said a Chinese military plane came within three meters of a Chinese warplane. the US Air Force in disputed South China. Sea and forced it to carry out evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision in international airspace. The close encounter came after what the United States called a recent trend of increasingly dangerous behavior by Chinese military aircraft. The PLA quickly responded with its own video and said it was the American plane. not the Chinese who flew Dangerously the world was just a few meters away from a major crisis this is a very complicated topic but I can simplify it all these things happened very close to China or simply in China's exclusive economic zone so they are not happening, you know , somewhere near Hawaii, is not near Brisbane for example, so this is the fact, but it is debatable whether or not the South China Sea is in China's exclusive economic zone because the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, everyone has rights to the area.

I also understand what you said, but you know that the United States is an outsider, yes, on this issue and this is an issue between China and some South China Sea Clements. We are committed to negotiating a solution through peaceful means. Think about military fortresses. of China think about the fact that we are so strong we are still talking about solving this problem peacefully we have shown well that we are sincere in finding a peaceful solution but this has nothing to do with the provocation of the Americans, as we see it, many People have expressed fears that we are closer to war than at any time in decades.

What is your opinion on this? I think they are right. You are thinking like this. I always believe that the South China Sea, for example, is more dangerous than the Taiwan Strait. Why did people think there could be something like that? There will be a war in the Taiwan Strait, but the question is that the problem is in the Taiwan Strait. The accident will not start a war. You know, there are so many satellites watching, there are so many radars watching the situation, even a few words spoken by President Biden. has to be interpreted by himself and his help, which means that everyone is worried about the problem, yes, that means that this problem actually cannot explode so easily in the South China Sea.

We have already had some accidents before, like the plane collision, like the very close encounter between ships and the problem is how can we solve this problem. China speaks of achieved beauty measures. President Biden talks about guardrails. Yes that's fine. Both sides have been united in the desire not to have a conflict, but the question is how to avoid it. The question is also our answer: if you don't want the water to boil, why would you throw wood on the fire? There are crisis control mechanisms, there are hotlines, there are agreed upon rules and they don't work, the reason why they don't It doesn't work because the United States and China think about crisis control in very different ways, so from the American side , crisis control is something that must be kept separate from the bilateral relationship, that is, whether bilateral relations are good or bad, it must always be strong. crisis control, you know it's too important even when relations are bad not to make sure that that doesn't get fixed from the Chinese point of view.

However, crisis control is linked to bilateral relations, so from the Chinese point of view, if bilateral relations are bad. If China has a complaint about American policies, then crisis control should be one of the levers of pressure the Chinese can use on the Americans, which is why we continue to have problems. When the United States uses the hotline and calls China, the Chinese still answer. Phone price control mechanisms do not work, so is conflict inevitable? They want to be prepared for war and they want to be seen as strong, but I don't mean that they really want to go to war.

This can give me a much more private pragmatic perspective. One case that I always talk about and tell my students is look at what happened in 2019, when there were these protests in Hong Kong, there was a concern that they hadn't sent troops in easily and that's how they came and the mass of troops in Shenzhen. but what was the final answer? The Chinese leaders did not send the tanks, they did not send the army, they use a kind of governance, it means they establish a kind of national security law, they are legal, that is, they take drastic measures. that and to me that seems to show that it's not the actual use of force, it's like they're sending a message of deterrence but also finding ways to accomplish their goal of going to war, this is kind of a reasoned lecturer of what is this XI foreign regime of Japan Gaga Google thank you