warrior society

The problem with all this is China's reversal of fortune was not "sudden" at all: the country had been in a perpetual civil war for three decades before World War 2, and, though under-equipped, its armies had exceptional infantry and officers who consistently surprised the Japanese. It would not be an exaggeration to call interwar China the period's only "warrior society". As Jonathan Fenby points out, most of the men had been levied to fight for this or that warlord, usually several times in their lives, and often starting as child soldiers. This gave all Chinese warlords - Mao included - a massive reserve of military talent to tap into. Contra popular belief, the Chinese army that entered Korea received no extensive Communist training before entering the country and was made up mostly of new volunteers and Kuomintang defectors. "PLA tactics" were nothing unique, but simply standard operating procedure for Chinese armies, developed over decades of fighting and familiar to tens of millions of veterans. It is telling that once this "warrior generation" aged out of military eligibility, the PLA completely floundered in Vietnam. - /u/Commodify

Reminds me of the Taliban