Chicom army plagued by corruption

 Epoch Times:

Corruption is a widespread phenomenon in China’s military where officers, including generals, have relied not on their duration of service or military prowess to rise in the ranks but rather bribery and connections.

Experts commented that a lack of competent leaders now threaten to be severely detrimental to China’s warfighting capabilities.

In the Chinese military, all positions and ranks were sold with quoted prices, state-run media Xinhua quoted three major generals from the Academy of Military Sciences saying on March 10, 2015.

“A commander from a military district bribed Xu Caihou [then vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC)] 20 million yuan ($3.14 million) for a senior position. Xu then promoted this one, rather than another commander who just bribed him 10 million yuan ($1.57 million),” Major General Yang Chunchang said.

In the Chinese military, there’s only one general who has real combat experience. Li Zuocheng, 68, served in the Vietnam War in 1979 as the director of a company consisting of about 100 soldiers. Li is the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the CMC.

“They bought their positions, they won’t spend their lives fighting,” Zhou Meisen, the screenwriter of anti-corruption propaganda TV series “In the Name of People,” said in an interview with the regime’s mouthpiece People’s Daily on April 6, 2017. “Once there’s a war, who can fight? Who will sacrifice his life to defend the country?”

“A general may still lead the military when he doesn’t have any combat experience; he can learn from books and military exercises,” U.S.-based China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan told The Epoch Times on Dec. 17. “But if the generals and officers received their positions and ranks by bribes, they don’t have the knowledge and capability to command the military to fight in a war.”
...

They were able to mass their forces for taking over Hong Kong which had no serious military to defend it.  If in a war they will try to make up for a lack of leadership and training by using overwhelming force and sacrificing troops to take objectives.  Whether they could do something as sophisticated as an amphibious assault on Taiwan looks doubtful at this point.