Two different people in this article are quoted (via the documentary) as being willing to kill themselves for the cause. Not just die in war, but actually kill themselves.
Is this level of fanaticism compatible with modern military practice?
Something I’ve learnt from following the war in Ukraine is that modern military practice has come a long way from WWII, Vietnam, and even later wars. Part of the reason Russia has mostly failed in their efforts is that they are an outdated military in terms of technology, leadership, structure, and doctrine.
So where is China at? I understand technologically they’re improving all the time and really quite modern. I suspect this level of fanaticism though does not work with modern doctrine. It’s debatable if it even worked for the Japanese in WWII.
Who knows where China is at? They’ve no combat experience. Their entire military is green, from every single line soldier through their entire command structure. I would anticipate that their military has at the edges very capable equipment and technologies, but at its core is logistically incapable and unable to fight any meaningful combat when things get real. Their entire readiness is based on training exercises, which are neither real, nor do they exercise the entire military machine in a transparent way. It’s likely the Chinese military doesn’t know it’s own capability as fraud and telling leaders what they want to hear is almost certainly rampant.
Chinese people also haven’t been exposed to thousands upon thousands of young men sent home in body bags since 1953, there aren’t many Chinese alive who have felt wars effects, which is a blessing for their people. Once the horrors touched every family in China, would they be quite as eager?
But I would wager a battle hardened military composed of veterans like the US and allies who have been engaged in global conflicts continuously since 1953 would soundly defeat China in any conventional war, but with horrendous prices on both sides. (N.b., I’m not saying this is a “good thing,” it’s not - but it is true, and it is what wins wars). To wit, their global logistics are functional and proven, their troops hardened and disciplined in combat, their leaders experienced and capable, their equipment understood and tested in earnest, and their populace inured to the tragedy.
Yes, this level of 'fanaticism' (carefully controlled) is completely compatible with modern military practice. Perhaps the propaganda makes it come out differently, but this level of 'fanaticism' is functionally the same as willing to be dropped off next to a downed pilot completely surrounded in a city with hundreds of hostiles and no other exfil in sight.
It's functionally the same thing as keeping flying to your weapons release point, knowing that anti air missiles are on the way, and you're going to get splashed shortly after you release your missiles unless you turn back right now, but the plan really needs you to fire off your rounds.
It's functionally the same as being the one live pilot in the middle of a drone decoy swarm so that you can imbue the swarm with some reasonable smarts and realism despite the storm of jamming.
The reality is that we ask soldiers, pilots and sailors to be ready to die all the same. The sharp and large distinction between being ready to die, and being ready to 'sacrifice themselves' I feel is really more of a distinction made to comfort those outside the military.
It's difficult to extrapolate WW2 Japan to China today. Certainly their fanaticism didn't win them the war, but it's difficult to imagine what type of 'mindset' would have won them the war given the immense material disparity they faced. Though if you want to take the meta view that their fanaticism mindset that infected both the armed forces and the nation in general led to the overall choices that ended up in them starting their wars (which then went to shit for them)... I'd actually agree. It's certainly disheartening to see this type of propaganda appear from any country.
Considering the rather hopeless frontal WW2 style Russian infantry assaults in Ukraine it seems there is enough suicidal or hopeless people to be found if you promise folks that their families will get some kind of financial reward with your death.
This won't work if you live in one of the better Russian cities like Moscow or St Petersburg hence rural areas and prisons being mainly targeted for their mobiks.
China faces a real dilemma in how to achieve it's goal of annexing Taiwan, killing the Taiwanese intellectuals, suppressing the natives and looting the industrial/IP assets:
An attack across the strait with a large buildup of troops (150,000+) and SEAD campaign will need months of logistical preparations which comes with the risk of giving the ROC enough warning to build a nuclear deterrent.
However, a rushed attack with less than three months of preparations is likely to be repulsed by the ROC military unless China resorts to a Grozny-style leveling campaign that would unfortunately make the whole endeavor unprofitable.
> goal of annexing Taiwan, killing the Taiwanese intellectuals, suppressing the natives and looting the industrial/IP assets
That's not China goal, which should be pretty obvious to anyone who took five minutes to think and read a couple of article about China historic strategy regarding Taiwan: economic integration and sponsoring the Taiwanese business elites. To be fair, the idea of annexing with Taiwan seems to have a lot more to do with the internal politics of mainland China than actually Taiwan nowadays.
For all my own distate of the CCP, it's a bit sad that we have reached a point where having an intelligent discussion regarding foreign countries with an average American has become next to impossible.
I'm not specific to China. I figure that for any country X to profitably annex country Y, they have to both annex Y and suppress opposition (kill most of the pre-annexation establishment, control the natives and loot industrial output).
If any country X annexes any country Y without doing the other stuff, the annexation won't be profitable.
That doesn't make sense here. Mainland China and Taiwan economies are already extremely integrated and most of the richest Taiwanese are actually fairly close to the CCP. That's my grip with the coverage of the situation in the US. Most American don't understand the current situation very well and imagine that Taiwan is a lot more segregated from China that it actually is.
Plus, a significant minority of Taiwanese are actually favorable to China (around 10% of the population). China doesn't want to loot Taiwan. They want control of the island. I still agree with you that it probably wouldn't go well for part of the population as illustrated by the current situation in Hong Kong.
You're arguing that annexing Taiwan and then refraining from redirecting industrial output/revenue towards the Chinese domestic market* will be a net profit for Beijing.
There's a big hole in that argument: annexation is not free. It has costs: the destruction of infrastructure assets, loss of life, capital flight, skilled labor flight, private sector boycotts, the burden of new sanctions and the expenditure of military action, occupation and administration.
The only reason to annex a country is if the expected gains offset these costs. Therefore, looting.
China knows that and doesn’t want to annexe Taiwan through violence. They would much prefer Taiwan to join with minimum damage. That’s always been their play book.
It is flexing right now because one, there might be a window of opportunity as the US is modernising its navy, two, it’s a way to keep Taiwan under the current status quo at time when American diplomacy has stepped up its own aggressive posturing towards China, three, it’s useful for Xi internally.
China is not trying to redirect Taiwan output to the mainland. As I said, Taiwan is right next door and already has a mostly integrated economy. They want to fold the island into China proper.
Taiwan is not and never was an economic annexion for China. That’s not the point. If you start from there, you are doomed to be wrong.
The whole country thing is ludicrous. All countries are fake divisions, often created long ago, which are treated as if God given. They create huge problems and fix very little.
Long before we had invented the concept of countries, there were city states fulfilling a similar role, and those were preceded by various sorts of tribal constructs which have existed since forever.
Humanity has always gravitated towards building societies centred around the concepts that modern-day nation states also embody. Our natural drive to band together and our tendency to be creating new fake problems all the time is certainly an interesting pairing at times.
The vastly complex system of interdependencies linked to globalisation could be the some early stage of that. Ironically this theatre is also where those made-up problems of ours can very quickly turn into real ones.
Being part of only a single group isn't really our thing though. Without something external to focus on we quickly tend go down this path of surprisingly efficient self-destructive behaviour that often involves lots of heavy weaponry. We are chaos incarnate :)
Perhaps, but the groups have subgroups and those have subgroups and so on until the individual. The world as a whole may get more integrated, and the exact way that dividing lines between the groups work may change (e.g. not so focused on geographic areas and more mutable), but I think it will always be there to some extent.
What creates problems is human conflict. I'm not optimistic that eliminating borders would make problems go away. But I agree that our obsession over nationality is unhealthy though.
Seeing that kind of thing makes me so sad. Like for Ukraine, or other countries, we could live happy in peace using money for good things.
Instead, some megalomaniac assholes wants to do vanity wars for subduing population that asked for nothing and are no threats. All of that for nothing instead of giving misery to our world.
That should be one of the number one issue of our world leaders and population, but too many persons prefer to be blind to these issues until they reach them.
It is not world war 3 yet, but we already still have the 50 shades of modern Nazism with countries like Russia and China.
I'd argue that Ukraine, prior to the 2022 invasion, was an immense threat to the Russian government. Ukraine was a "brother nation" that had kicked out their dictator in 2014, in a revolution known locally as Maidan, and had since seen economic growth and lower inequality.
Unless Ukraine is suppressed by Russia* the Russian people may start to look at Ukraine as a role model for how to get rid of their own dictator.
*Still a possibility, the war is almost a stalemate right now.
Looking forward to seeing how the China apologists spin this one. Perhaps an entree of whataboutism, main dish of unfair Western media portrayal and finally allegations of veiled racism for dessert.
That depends. I would probably be labeled as a "China apologists".
It depends on what opinion you want.
Overall China/Taiwan relations? US's role in this? Historical opinion dating back to 100 years of humiliation? China's Civil War? Human psychology? China's perspective? US's perspective? Economic competition? Propaganda on both sides? etc.
There are a lot of people on HN who read a Wikipedia page, reads pure anti-China mainstream news, and then thinks he/she knows what is right or wrong.
But I think you're only looking for people to say "China bad" right? And then if they counter with something, you'll just say "but look at this documentary", right?
In my opinion, the most grounded and logical response in this thread is from @brmgb.
Is this level of fanaticism compatible with modern military practice?
Something I’ve learnt from following the war in Ukraine is that modern military practice has come a long way from WWII, Vietnam, and even later wars. Part of the reason Russia has mostly failed in their efforts is that they are an outdated military in terms of technology, leadership, structure, and doctrine.
So where is China at? I understand technologically they’re improving all the time and really quite modern. I suspect this level of fanaticism though does not work with modern doctrine. It’s debatable if it even worked for the Japanese in WWII.