U.S. National Defense University Report Exposes Possible Weaknesses of Chinese Communist Party’s Military

Foreign media reported on Sept. 16 that the U.S. National Defense University recently released a report on an investigation into the CCP’s military.

 The report profiled the backgrounds of more than 300 high-ranking officers of the Communist Party’s five major military branches: army, navy, air force, rocket force, and strategic support, over the past six years, and pointed out that a common weakness of the Communist leadership is a lack of joint combat capability and experience. This could be a key factor in their failure to wage war.

 The report said that since 1986, the U.S. military has made horizontal interaction drills to the norm. In 2021, whether it is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Indo-Pacific Commander, 40 senior U.S. military generals will have joint service experience. The CCP military leadership has been serving in the military branch to which it belongs and has almost no experience in cross-unit command practice.

 Such a rigid approach will reduce the CCP’s combat effectiveness in future wars. Especially in the face of high-level joint operations, the CCP military will be stuck in a stagnant situation. This is like the situation of the Russian army in Ukraine, where the overall cohesion of the army is at an extremely low level.

 Another key difference between the two militaries is that almost all four-star commanders in the U.S. military have practical combat experience. Nearly half of the CCP’s senior military officials are professional political commissars.