How would you define China's Warrior Ethos?

ABC78

Junior Member
How would you define China's Warrior Ethos?

I say a presentation by the author of "The Warrior Ethos" and the author maid mostly western references. And I was wondering what would China's warrior ethos be built on beyond the Mao red era "Long March, Anti-Japan and Civil War" tradition.

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paintgun

Senior Member
nationalism, patriotism and loyalty to the party

these are the pillars PLA can fall back to define this 'warrior ethos'

usually such thing evolve and stem from culture, like mentioned in the C-SPAN about duty and honor, but Chinese culture is currently in a limbo, and it has never emphasized much on warrior or war, in fact an averse subject, the core of chinese culture has always been family
 

delft

Brigadier
It is remarkable how different the conduct of military with a similar background can be. During the liberation of the Netherlands in 1944-45 the Poles and Canadians had the reputation of waging their lives to reconnoiter places that might still be occupied by the German army and try to spare the lives and property of the people living there, while the US army had the reputation of pouting artillery fire into anything suspicious without such concerns.
In the next war the Netherlands was concerned with, the war against newly independent Indonesia, war crimes were committed that could not be acknowledged until a short while ago. There were complaints at the time, in the mid-fifties a cousin of my mother's said this unit had taken part in terrible things he didn't want to talk about, in 1969 someone wrote a book about those war crimes that led to a temporally loud discussion that died down pretty soon but only this year the Dutch government lost a court case in The Hague that forced them to pay compensation to survivors of a massacre on Java in 1949. In the late '90's a short article in my newspaper by a veteran from that war described how he was send out as an officer with a small detachment to retrieve the administration of a forestry company on Sumatra. He took prisoner a small number of members of the Indonesian army but because he had too few men to guard them he had them shot. Quite clearly he didn't recognize that he was a war criminal and the newspaper didn't notice it either.
So this presentation by Mr. Pressfield compares "the" US military ethics with those of antique Greeks and with the Japanese army of WWI and WWII, and wonders about those strange beings in South Asia with but little comprehension of the differences between Western armies at a given time and as they developed through time. It was altogether a rather shallow presentation, although not as shallow as paintgun's remarks.
 

paintgun

Senior Member
hey i knew someone was gonna shoot at me i almost put a final sentence : just a ramble don't shoot, and it did happen lol

cmon delft, ABC78 was asking about what is the defining values of modern Chinese 'warrior ethos' in PLA
let us be honest, noone is a saint in war and as they say as well, all is fair in love and war, what we are really looking into is what motivates and becomes the basis for such warrior ethos, the C-SPAN video is certainly speaking from American perspective, and remember he is speaking in front of an audience of military professionals to promote his work

now try answering ABC78's good question about this interesting topic without trying to put anyone down
 

montyp165

Junior Member
The traditional Chinese warrior ethos has basically been that of the intellectual soldier/warrior, i.e, one who uses intelligence and cunning moreso than brute force to achieve goals. In fiction the Romance of the Three Kingdoms has numerous examples of this sort listed, or the Water Margin for that matter, and a modern (albeit from a Japanese novel) example would be Yang Wen-Li from Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Real life traditional warrior heroes would be people like Yue Fei or Qi Jiguang.
 

CottageLV

Banned Idiot
China is a messed up society since its birth, contradictory at every level. The general population is the most educated and the most uneducated in the world. The people are both most patriotic and least patriotic. Unlike other major civilizations, China was never really a violent culture. It's always about world peace and elevation of personal education. If you look into Chinese history, for the past 1000 years, it's always being China being the most powerful civilization in the realm of its reach. China neither dominate (not including Korea of Vietnam, both were protectorate) or conquer other countries. The mentality of "I'm the best, you don't worth my time" always existed. This creates a society that doesn't look to violence to solve problems.
China was the most developed civilization for the last few thousand years, there was law and order. Unlike Japan and Feudal Europe, no warriors or Samurais were needed. All disputes and violence were suppressed by the law and the political machine.
This is both good and bad for the country. In the modern time of integrated globe, this is a bad thing, because it is becoming more dog eat dog again, not different from jungle justice from few thousand years ago. This cultural tradition softened the people and makes it do nothing but just send out verbal complain, verbal condemnation at the worst. China's foreign affairs department is now nicknamed the complaining department.
So to word it a little more plainly, today's Chinese culture is a wussy culture, it could not and would not stand up for itself.
 

paintgun

Senior Member
certainly not a wussy culture, but modern Chinese culture is struggling to find it's identity and soul, ripped away from it by the Cultural revolution

most if not all military organization cultivates the same sense of honor, duty, and servitude or sacrifice as the core values of its members, each with their own methods and reasoning
the nature of conscription, volunteer and professional army also plays a significant effect in how to cultivate this values into a warrior ethos
 

montyp165

Junior Member
certainly not a wussy culture, but modern Chinese culture is struggling to find it's identity and soul, ripped away from it by the Cultural revolution

most if not all military organization cultivates the same sense of honor, duty, and servitude or sacrifice as the core values of its members, each with their own methods and reasoning
the nature of conscription, volunteer and professional army also plays a significant effect in how to cultivate this values into a warrior ethos

It would be misleading to characterize the idea of modern Chinese not having any clue about a warrior ethos, especially since the PLA's military conception of service draws not only from the KMT NRA but also the old Chinese military classics, moreso than some are able to recognize.
 

ABC78

Junior Member
In the author's presentation he mentions how militaries and warrior caste are forms of tribes.

Is there the possibility that the Chinese people and history had evolved beyond tribalism so long ago?

Without that bit of tribal mindset in existence to help forge the warrior ethos narrative.

Here is a presentation by the author of "The Origins of Political Order" it is about how people moved from tribes to nation states. The author those a brief history of early China and how it was established by war.

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montyp165

Junior Member
In the author's presentation he mentions how militaries and warrior caste are forms of tribes.

Is there the possibility that the Chinese people and history had evolved beyond tribalism so long ago?

Without that bit of tribal mindset in existence to help forge the warrior ethos narrative.

Here is a presentation by the author of "The Origins of Political Order" it is about how people moved from tribes to nation states. The author those a brief history of early China and how it was established by war.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

The Romans would be the best Western parallel to Ancient Chinese political development wrt dealing with scattered tribes to a cohesive unified political entity, and one can see certain similar trends in both.
 
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