Did you even read my responses? They did it due to Deng reforms, yes. Because Deng is corrupt and want the military to be corrupt as well? Are you serious? I'm gonna say it again: CHINA DON'T HAVE MONEY! This is not fucking 2016 China with GDP exceeding Japan. Get that fact straight. It's either let the military do business or disband more military personnels. They have no choice. Of course he allowed it for 8 years, THERE WAS NO MORE MONEY FOR THE MILITARY!
Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter Gollevainen
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Military spending was high in the 1980's. But it was comparable to and still lower than US military spending as %GDP.
Deng used military spending cuts not just to conserve money (of course it had that effect) but also as a political tool to weaken the PLA internally. There were other ways of saving a few % GDP. He gambled on good relations with the US saving him. That is why US wants China to go back to a Deng style regime and starting with the 2009 Pivot to Asia started suppressing China. They woke up and found that Hu Jintao wasn't a pushover who wanted China to depend on others.
Typically 3rd world military dictators are the ones who bet on good relations with others saving them. It might work out, it might not. Saddam Hussein and Ghaddafi found out the hard way that it might not.
I believe that a period in the 1990s and early 2000s, the ROCAF had key advantages in two domains, possessing AEW&C at the (which the PLA had no answer to), as well as a much larger fleet of ARH BVR capable fighters (Mirage 2000s and more importantly, the F-CK-1s, and a number of F-16s) -- the ability of the PLAAF to contest air superiority in that period was likely at its most precarious, and would have suffered likely significant casualties and attrition to a point that securing air superiority would have been a pyrrhic victory.
(Edit: I see snoopsnoop has explained the points as well, in #4859)
Military spending was high in the 1980's. But it was comparable to and still lower than US military spending as %GDP.
Deng used military spending cuts not just to conserve money (of course it had that effect) but also as a political tool to weaken the PLA internally. There were other ways of saving a few % GDP. He gambled on good relations with the US saving him. That is why US wants China to go back to a Deng style regime and starting with the 2009 Pivot to Asia started suppressing China. They woke up and found that Hu Jintao wasn't a pushover who wanted China to depend on others.
Typically 3rd world military dictators are the ones who bet on good relations with others saving them. It might work out, it might not. Saddam Hussein and Ghaddafi found out the hard way that it might not.
Back on topic please, both of you.
by the early 2000's PLA already had KJ-2000 and Su-30s which reestablished the advantage.
also going by the crashes of China Airlines (which used retired Taiwanese military pilots) , I'm not sure how effectively those assets would've been used.
I said between the 1990s and early 2000s.
The Su-30MKKs only began to enter service in significant numbers by about 2005, and the KJ-2000 only entered service in a mature state sometime between 2005-2007.
Furthermore, it wouldnt' be a stretch to say that the Su-30MKK's ARH BVR capability was only at best equal to the ARH BVR capabilities that the ROCAF had at the time, and was not qualitatively superior (yet was quantitatively inferior).
Of course, after 2007, when the PLA procured large numbers of PL-12 equipped 4th generation fighters such as J-10A and J-11B, KJ-2000s began to be supplemented by large numbers KJ-200s, and then 4.5th generation fighters like J-10B, J-10C and J-16 and new AEW&C like KJ-500s emerged, the balance was quite rapidly reversed to a state that cannot be overcome, let alone with the entry of J-20. And this all of course ignores new PLA long range strike options.
.... However, my point is that actually yes, I believe there was a good period of time whereby the ROCAF could seriously contest air superiority against the PLAAF, to a degree that arguably the ROCAF could not only contest air superiority over Taiwan but also maintain it. And this period of time was between the 1990s and early 2000s.
This kind of story is fun to tell and everyone can enjoy a laugh. Just don't take it seriously. Do you think Russians are so simple-minded as to be taken advantage of signing a deal as important as Su-27, their most advanced fighter aircraft that they had not sold to anyone outside of Russia? Even if they were too drunk and for whatever reason agreed to sign a contract to sell Su-27, don't you think they wouldn't renege on the agreement the next day when they were all sober? We're assuming that the contract was signed during the drinking party to begin with. And, don't you think for a deal of such significance and magnitude, there would have been a chain of approvals before anything would be finalized?
There are so many holes in such a story, I can't believe people would give any credence to such fairy tales.
OK, understood. This means that Jiang Zemin's entire leadership period was a failure to allow this to happen.
I think your expectations for the PLA are a little bit too high.
By PLANAF’s own admission, Su-30MK2/R-77 combo is vastly weaker than J-10AH/PL-12, so much so that in DACT training the J-10 is responsible for handling targets in BVR. This doesn’t bode well for the Su-30 in a match up against the F-16 unless it is WVR.