PLA in the future, predictions?

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amadeus

Just Hatched
Registered Member
Hi, this is James from Seattle, and I just signed up and thought I might say hi to everyone here. Chinese American, in senior year at U Washington, doing the ROTC program with the US Army, I major in poli sci and two years ago I spend one year in Fudan University in Shanghai, and had been fascinated with China ever since.

I've been shadowing this forum for about a week now, and its got me thinking, where do you see China's military in a few years from now, in 2015 and beyond? With the abundance of discussion about the present, surely it cannot hurt to make an educated prediction about the future?

I understand that the military is only about a decade behind the US in terms of technology, although the quality of the PLA is yet to be standardized in training equipment. If the trends continue, this is what I think can probably happen in the immediate future, let me know what you think?

2008-2015

1. the PLAN continues to modernize, newer classes of submarines, frigates, and destroyers enter service, while the navy undertakes more ambitious missions and projects (although still limited) its influences in instances of peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. China commissions its first Aircraft carrier.

2. The J-XX is unveiled, which is slightly inferior to the F-22 but poses a credible deterrent against perceived foreign encroachments. The number of improved J-10s and J-11s comprises of 30-50% of the air force.

3. The army continues to modernize with C4ISR emphasis, new technology is continuously injected into the system, and the PLA carries out several missions in conjunction with the international community globally. However, overall quality is still short of developed nations' military, and professionalization remains a strong challenge.

2015-2025

I'll venture to assume that sometimes by the twenties, if present trends persist, the most advanced fraction of the PLA will be able to mount an effective resistance against a conventional American attack, continued modernization will remain a paramount objective, and the overhauling of the entire military, would be the goal.

No concrete predictions, but its very possible, if present trends continue, for the world to move into a truly multipolar system by 2025 and beyond...Chinese influences in Africa and S. America continues to grow, and increased activities in the Pacific and Indian Oceans could potentially become sources of friction with other powers. If there is no war involved, Taiwan could gradually enter into a economics union with the Mainland, and potentially unification, if the CCP continues to liberalize.

Just random thoughts, of course, no one would know what will really happen, but I couldn't resist this post, after all, who would be better qualified to make such a judgment than my learned friends here?

J.
 
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antiterror13

Brigadier
welcome aboard James.

I don't believe China is a decade behind US in military technology, perhaps about 2 decades in Aviation and radar and 3 decades in turbofan engine tech. In Army related equipment tech I believe it is only a decade or less away

but you are absolutely right, China is catching up extremely fast .. watch out Russia and EU ... soon China will be ahead of them in military tech. But comparing to US, China won't be in parity until 2050-2075
 
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sidewinder01

Junior Member
antiterror13 said:
welcome aboard James.

I don't believe China is a decade behind US in military technology, perhaps about 2 decades in Aviation and radar and 3 decades in turbofan engine tech. In Army related equipment tech I believe it is only a decade or less away

but you are absolutely right, China is catching up extremely fast .. watch out Russia and EU ... soon China will be ahead of them in military tech. But comparing to US, China won't be in parity until 2050-2075
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China is actually about aleast 15 to 20 years behind US airforce technology, and around 25 or more years if u put in the experience and adjusting time factors in.
In the army, its really hard to say because China does have some pretty good tanks and IFV and carriers that are just as good as US counter parts but they are only equpped by the elite GAs or armored regiments.. Plus now I think airforce matter more than army....
China would have developed SO much faster if there werent so much corruption
And the spirit of Mao and pre-culture revolution is mostly gone now....
 
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Maggern

Maggern

Junior Member
So the US is 40-60 years ahead of Europe and Russia? Except in some select areas, the US is on par or behind Europe or Russia when it comes to technology (logistics, training, experience etc is a completely different matter, the US appears to be quite superior in this field). When you strip away the US gadgets like stealth technology, advanced satellite systems and some other electronics, the vehicles, the infantry equipment and some of the planes are in themselves not superior. What the US excels on, it seems, is to bring all this together in one nicely shaped war machine, which is something other major powers today have problems doing (some bogged down by poor training, shabby maintenance, lack of political will or funding etc..)

China has acquired some nice gadgets the last few years, which I agree in some cases can be said to be quite able compared to the machinery of other major powers. But we have to remember that if you are able, through training, doctrines, logistics and experience, to make your stuff come together in a seamless way, then you'd come a long way even without the best equipment. Here too, China is making real progress it seems, and IMO it is here the PLA will be able to transform itself into a real fighting force. Remember many Western armies still use much equipment from, like, WW2, and still are able to give a real fight.
 
Finn McCool

Finn McCool

Captain
Registered Member
amadeus said:
2008-2015

China commissions its first Aircraft carrier.
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I don't think that China will deploy an aircraft carrier by that time. We have no indicaiton that China is undertaking an aircraft carrier program at this time, the Varyag is apparently inactive, and we've heard nothing whatsoever about an indigenous carrier. Based on the time frames for other countries doing similar things (India's plan for an indigenous carrier comes to mind, as do the CVFs) saying that China will start basically from scratch (they can only do so much in secret) and complete the carrier by 2015 seems ambitous at best.
 
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pla101prc

Senior Member
sidewinder01 said:
China would have developed SO much faster if there werent so much corruption
And the spirit of Mao and pre-culture revolution is mostly gone now....
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lol that's not a very professional statement. i'd deconstruct this whole thing for you but this isnt what the discussion is about.

this idea of quantifying technological gaps doesnt work in reality. the americans are so many years ahead of the insurgents in iraq and it took them 7 years to clean up the mess.
China's real problem is integration, coordination and logistics. its so easy to catch up on a specific weapon system like the stealth fighter, but the real deficiency takes time to sort out.
i would say by 2020 China will have a force advanced enough to overpower american presence in west pacific. it would take them a bit longer to actually match the americans globally. but by that time (say around 2035) what really matters between major powers are things described as such in "unrestricted warfare". like finance and stuff.
 
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sidewinder01

Junior Member
pla101prc said:
lol that's not a very professional statement. i'd deconstruct this whole thing for you but this isnt what the discussion is about.

this idea of quantifying technological gaps doesnt work in reality. the americans are so many years ahead of the insurgents in iraq and it took them 7 years to clean up the mess.
China's real problem is integration, coordination and logistics. its so easy to catch up on a specific weapon system like the stealth fighter, but the real deficiency takes time to sort out.
i would say by 2020 China will have a force advanced enough to overpower american presence in west pacific. it would take them a bit longer to actually match the americans globally. but by that time (say around 2035) what really matters between major powers are things described as such in "unrestricted warfare". like finance and stuff.
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ok dude I really dont want to say this but My uncle who was a colonal in the general staff department told me so many important people have defected or became spy for taiwan or ran to the US over the past 30 years?? All becuse of money?? Real patriots waste their life while earning very little to build china while the elites gao gan(offsprings of PRC high command and founders) who controls the majority of china's wealth rans to the US just cuz of money and ruins everything? A carrier could have been started long time ago if it werent for some reasons i dotn want to say. Even the deputy commander of the chinese naval stole more than 100 million yuan so that he can have a @#%#@*&^ mistress stored in some fancy little house.
 
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pla101prc

Senior Member
lol dont get this off topic man, if you blame all this stuff on corruption then China wouldnt have been the most advanced civilization for so many years and it wouldnt have been growing so fast in recent years. and its very difficult for real "important" ppl to defect, its not like i havent seen how China's national security bureau works. just because you dont catch em in other countries doesnt mean they dont exist, the fact that China is catching them says a lot about its domestic intelligence-gathering capability. as for general Wang Shou Ye (that's his name), lets just say that he wasnt actually busted for corruption. o and "offsprings of PRC high command and founders" dont run off to other countries, many of them are in fact preparing to take over the command of the country in 2012. its kinda rare for high-ranked officials to run off to other countries anyways. the US is corrupted, corruption corresponds with power so if you are looking for corruption in the US you gotta look at wall street. when enron collapsed no government officials took any blame,same with the mess we have here...sounds like &^%$*@# to me. but yet the US is still the most advanced and powerful country in the world. the least corrupted countries arent really the most advanced. this stuff is too complicated to explain online so i dont want to get any further into the discussion, foreign intelligence rarely makes the right prediction about China anyways. so yeah lets just end it here.

what i am trying to say is that it doesnt make sense to measure technological with number of years. the speed and means of technological development or acquisition are increasing. so say if China stands at where the US used to be in 1980,it'll take them less than 10 years to get to 1990,but then the americans are also progressing faster than they were before. its unrealistic to just take two armies out of context and compare them tank for tank and plane for plane. even the americans had the same weapons as China did, with better logistics, C4ISR, and in some cases more advanced fighting doctrine, they might still be able to defeat China. and then you take into consideration of the PLA's fighting spirit and tradition, the result will again be different. its like if you give canadian soldier AKs and nothing else i bet we can still kick the taliban's ass,maybe with a heck of a lot more casualties but we'll still win. there are also other cases like nukes developed in the 90s and the 70s. well according to US nuclear strategist waltz it makes no real difference, as long as you can hit the ONE of other guy's cities with your nuke its going to pose some form of deterrence. 100 nukes are as good as 1000 nukes. weapons and training do not equal to fighting capability. in a realistic scenario, wars are competitions of national strength not military strength. how well China's army can perform in the next say 20 years depends entirely on the overall strength of the country. for example you see the US on an almost irreversible decline, which means that no matter how fast its military tech progresses (which is still really fast) its not really gonna make the US army a stronger army. also we dont know what warfare in 2035 are like. could be just punching a few keys on the computer, and dow jones depreciates by 50% the next week, or a nuclear power station in China shuts down causing provincial wide balckout. this might well be what military is in the future, merged with civilian sectors, by then how do you judge who is more advanced?
 
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sidewinder01

Junior Member
pla101prc said:
lol dont get this off topic man, if you blame all this stuff on corruption then China wouldnt have been the most advanced civilization for so many years and it wouldnt have been growing so fast in recent years. and its very difficult for real "important" ppl to defect, its not like i havent seen how China's national security bureau works. just because you dont catch em in other countries doesnt mean they dont exist, the fact that China is catching them says a lot about its domestic intelligence-gathering capability. as for general Wang Shou Ye (that's his name), lets just say that he wasnt actually busted for corruption. o and "offsprings of PRC high command and founders" dont run off to other countries, many of them are in fact preparing to take over the command of the country in 2012. its kinda rare for high-ranked officials to run off to other countries anyways. the US is corrupted, corruption corresponds with power so if you are looking for corruption in the US you gotta look at wall street. when enron collapsed no government officials took any blame,same with the mess we have here...sounds like bullshit to me. but yet the US is still the most advanced and powerful country in the world. the least corrupted countries arent really the most advanced. this stuff is too complicated to explain online so i dont want to get any further into the discussion, foreign intelligence rarely makes the right prediction about China anyways. so yeah lets just end it here.

what i am trying to say is that it doesnt make sense to measure technological with number of years. the speed and means of technological development or acquisition are increasing. so say if China stands at where the US used to be in 1980,it'll take them less than 10 years to get to 1990,but then the americans are also progressing faster than they were before. its unrealistic to just take two armies out of context and compare them tank for tank and plane for plane. even the americans had the same weapons as China did, with better logistics, C4ISR, and in some cases more advanced fighting doctrine, they might still be able to defeat China. and then you take into consideration of the PLA's fighting spirit and tradition, the result will again be different. its like if you give canadian soldier AKs and nothing else i bet we can still kick the taliban's ass,maybe with a heck of a lot more casualties but we'll still win. there are also other cases like nukes developed in the 90s and the 70s. well according to US nuclear strategist waltz it makes no real difference, as long as you can hit the ONE of other guy's cities with your nuke its going to pose some form of deterrence. 100 nukes are as good as 1000 nukes. weapons and training do not equal to fighting capability. in a realistic scenario, wars are competitions of national strength not military strength. how well China's army can perform in the next say 20 years depends entirely on the overall strength of the country. for example you see the US on an almost irreversible decline, which means that no matter how fast its military tech progresses (which is still really fast) its not really gonna make the US army a stronger army. also we dont know what warfare in 2035 are like. could be just punching a few keys on the computer, and dow jones depreciates by 50% the next week, or a nuclear power station in China shuts down causing provincial wide balckout. this might well be what military is in the future, merged with civilian sectors, by then how do you judge who is more advanced?
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ok since you take this seriously Ill tell you this. Havent u ever worked in the Chinese military?? My whole family has been with and worked for the PLA in eveny level below the big military region level for 3 generations since the war against the japanese 1937. You dont know shit about thow the inside of the military works, you just making the same mistakes as with young chinese people in China who only see the good part of the things and make everything seem so bright. In fact, it is not all like that at all. Of course China has been developing tremendiously fast, but corruption has always been a majoy problem since the dynasties. my other uncles wife's father who was the commander for the inner mongolia military district in the 90's once told me if you getting rid of corruptions worth more than 10 mechanized divisions, and dont tell me you know more than him because he worked for the chinese military since 1938. And if you living in China, you should know how bad corruption is. As for the gao gan, of course they are gonna take over china, they already have. They are the head of all the largest state-owned firms or companies, they are in command of 90% of China's wealth. Of course it is rare for high-command officer to run away, but if you work in the intellgence department, even if you are only a mid-level offcier, you knowledge will cause the destruction of a whole network of intellgence in a nation. Like how a sudden someone who was a gao gan, who worked in the second department of the general staff, who was responsible for operations in the Americas ran to the US, usually a position vital as that are only given to the gao gan-level people. They are trusted with the most important informations but they dont keep it.
 
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bd popeye

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
sidewinder01 & pla101prc If I have to remove any more cursing or foul language..however slight. I will issue warnings. Foul language is not tolerated in our forum.

bd popeye super moderator
 
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