One of the many common arguments used to mitigate fearmongering about Chinese weapon systems consists of peace disease. The basics of the argument says that China has very few senior officers and no rank and file with wartime experience, and this will harm their performance against a seasoned military like the United States. But some analysts have pushed back, pointing to several examples from history that argues the opposite. The United States hadn’t fought a war in almost two decades, but they beat the experienced Iraqi army in decisive fashion. The British had fought a series of colonial wars leading up to World War I. But the German army who didn’t have the same experience handed the British a string of defeats. The major problem with those examples, as I discussed in a previous article, was their victory resulted from a variety of factors more than experience that include military culture, training, and equipment. There are two relevant examples from Chinese history which shows these additional factors.
The first comes from the Song Dynasty. Ruling in the same timeframe as the European Middle Ages, the Song fought several wars with the Kitan Liao empire. The Chinese treaty with the Kitan produced long periods of peace interspersed with wars. The Song Dynasty performed horrible at the start of these wars. The generals were accustomed to rather pleasant peacetime requirements, and the soldiers were untrained. But the baptism of combat quickly produced a trained group of officers and soldiers that rose to the occasion and produced results for the empire. But they again went through a long period of peace, and the same pattern repeated itself when the next war broke out 30 years later. This was a good example of peace disease, as the military performed well in combat with good leaders, culture, and advanced medieval weaponry, including extensive gunpowder weapons hundreds of years before Europeans adopted it. They simply lacked rigorous peacetime training.
The next example comes from a military with lots of experience. The Nationalist army under Chiang Kai-Shek unified the country in 1926 and ruled during what is called the Nanjing Decade. This period has the dubious distinction of predating their fight with the Japanese, before World War II eclipsed that struggle, and before the Communists won the Civil War in 1949. As a result, they are often viewed from the lens of defeat in 1949 instead of their victories in the 1920s. New scholarship shows that the Nationalist army had strong espirit de corps and bold aggressive tactics that carried them to victory against the warlords. But they faced defeat not because of imperial overstretch or because of their lack of peace disease but due to several important factors.
Against the Communists, the Nationalists fought forces that were just as motivated as they were. The extremely rough terrain of Jiangxi province, where Mao based his rebellion, was particularly unsuited to aggressive maneuver. In fact, the aggressive independent maneuver that secured victory against the warlords resulted in devastating ambushes and defeat against the Communists. Against the Japanese, they were simply overwhelmed by a superior military machine with more advanced equipment. The Chinese nationalists fought well, but the Japanese had more and better artillery, which was properly distributed to its frontline units. They had support from tactical air forces and naval batteries which pummeled the Chinese units. Chiang Kai-Shek’s units, though experienced, didn’t have the same staying power and offensive punch that the Japanese did and they suffered accordingly.
Peace disease is a very important factor but it is one among many. The current Chinese army has a multitude of problems which suggest they will not be able to perform like the Germans in World War I, Japanese in World War II, and America in the Gulf War. Based on historical precedents they will likely pay for the needed combat experience by the blood of their soldiers in the early phase of any conflict.
