Peacekeeping missions in Africa have a way of humbling proud nations, like America in Mogadishu or Ireland in Jadotville. But while American and irish troops actually acquitted themselves well in their respective engagements, the same can’t be said for Chinese troops in the Battle of Juba, in South Sudan, in July of 2016.
The short summary is that two sides in the civil war had set up bases on either side of a UN refugee camp, and when fighting broke out, woefully unprepared Chinese peacekeeping troops got their asses kicked.
Takeaways:
“Both sides fielded artillery and tank units. Chinese peacekeepers, of course, had neither.”
“Heavily outnumbered and outgunned, the Chinese soldiers couldn’t have asked for worse battlefield conditions.”
“The United Nations Camp perimeter was lightly protected by Hesco barriers, which are filled with sand instead of concrete walls.”
“The guard towers were wooden shacks instead of concrete pillboxes. They had no bullet resistant glass or reinforced sandbags, no concrete mortar protection zones that you would typically want on a base like this. The entrance gate was a flimsy metal fence instead of a heavy metal block gate. The main defense was barbed wire fences.”
“This place was not set up to prevent a heavy assault.”
Then the two forces started attack each other.
“The government army forces and the rebel forces rampaged through the city. They did not observe any rules of engagement, attacking hospitals and non-combatants.”
Some 1,400 rebel troops “looted shops, hospitals and aid stations.”
“Both sides were shooting at each other through the refugee camp.”
“Wooden UN guard towers came under heavy machine gun fire. This forced the Chinese peacekeepers to leave and take cover.”
“Hundreds of bullets rockets and artillery [shells] peppered the perimeter. The Chinese U.N forces retreated deeper into the compound and clustered around the few armored personnel carriers they had. This is when an enemy rocket-propelled grenade struck their APC. It killed two Chinese soldiers and wounded six others.”
“Enemy militiamen then looted one of the aid warehouses. They stole $30 million worth of United Nations goods. This was enough food to feed over 200,000 people for a month in the famine stricken nation.”
“Chinese-led UN peacekeepers were pinned down inside the compound, and unable to effectively return fire with the weapons and vehicles they had at their disposal. They were unable to prevent militia forces on the streets from going house to house hunting people down and committing
unspeakable acts just outside the camp.”
Some individual Chinese forces did better, rallying and retrieving the weapons they had abandoned, and preventing forces from storming the center of the compound.
272 confirmed casualties day one, 20 of which were under Chinese protection.
Reports said “UN leadership had directly ordered Chinese and Ethiopian battalions to leave the base and act as a quick response force They were supposed to go out, leave the gate, and set up a perimeter, but they refused to go.”
“Major General Patrick Cameron, in charge of the United Nations investigation, wrote a damning report on the Chinese soldiers…he cites an overall lack of leadership preparedness and international integration.”
“In the past four decades, Chinese soldiers have had basically zero combat experience, so it’s interesting to see that one of the major findings from the report is that they’re very risk-adverse. They don’t have the experience of what it takes to put your life on the line.”
Chinese retort that UN weapons and equipment suck. That’s probably true as well.
Chinese soldiers didn’t even know the rules of engagement.
“Orders were flat out ignored by Chinese soldiers because they came from a different source than they were used to. They weren’t flexible.”
“There was also evidence of a lack of basic medical training and Hazevac procedures” among the Chinese soldiers.
The two deaths made Chinese soldiers even more risk adverse.
Supposedly China implemented reforms after the dismal showing, but throughout history, China’s military has looked remarkably ineffective in fighting against theoretically smaller foes.
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 6th, 2023 at 8:06 PM and is filed under Military, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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13 Responses to “The Battle of Juba: When China Got Its Ass Kicked”
I would really hesitate to judge any country’s military by how it performed on a UN mission.
The constraints are such that you can’t really get a good picture of their real performance, and then you have the politics of it all. Also, Africa…
China may or may not have a good military. I’d suggest that it might be smartest to overestimate them, the way that Russia was looked at as an actual superpower prior to the 24th of February, 2022.
There’s probably more meat and professionalism to the Chinese military than Russias; they’re at least paying lip service to the idea of modern logistics, and trying to learn as much as they can from observation.
Where China has problems is that they’ve got serious economic and demographic problems coming up in the near future, some of which are already affecting them. Remains to be seen if they can power through them…
I would question the Chinese capacity to absorb casualties; there is no social security in China. That’s provided by your kids, and if the regime manages to get a bunch of those single-birth children killed in some military misadventure? Oi. I don’t think they can sustain losses, at all. When you’ve got six kids, you can afford to shrug when a couple don’t come home from the wars. You have one kid, and the idiots in charge of it all get them killed doing something stupid…? You’ve got not a damn thing to lose, and a lot to avenge.
One weakness of the Chinese military is three generations of one child policy in an ancestor-worshipping society. In most families there is only one child to carry on the family. If that child dies before having children the family disappears.
That isn’t a big deal in a Christian society (which we still are, despite growing atheism). Your afterlife isn’t dependent on your descendants. In China it is. Even though the CCP is officially atheistic that does not change the cultural belief any more than it does in the west.
When China had swarms of children wartime casualties hardly mattered. There was someone left to carry the family forward, including daughters (who did not go to war). Now there is typically one son. Who is subject to military service. Who can get killed in combat before having a child
That means China can no longer afford heavy military casualties before society starts falling apart. Which means much of their military strategy is based on waging war without fighting wars. Buying politicians and bluffing opponents into yielding what is wanted by China.
Don’t believe me? How much actual war-fighting has China done since the one-child policy began to bite? Damn little. Beating up on internal dissidents, sure, but that’s not war. I think the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 was the las war China fought and that lasted less than a month.
The UN has accomplished just what with all this ‘refugee’ security and assistance? Besides generating a few decades worth of bureaucracy and graft development that relies entirely on the keeping millions helpless. As to the conduct of Chinese military forces deployed, which of the two sides were they supposed to side with, and just why should a refugee camp have concrete pill boxes and a concrete wall surrounding it? It’s supposed to be a haven for refugees, not prison to keep them in. When the opposing sides took up positions on either side, bringing their armor and artillery with them, it was already too late for some Chinese colonel to do something about the situation.
Not saying that the Chinese didn’t step on their own dicks, but it seems the UN by policy typically under resources its peacekeeping outfits (except for the SUVs and the offices for the bureaucrats) and the usually under-resourced nations providing the troops can’t/won’t insist on realistic staffing and equipment (although western nations have been been guilty of this as well.) Then everybody is surprised when they get overrun or run away and dozens or thousands or millions of refugees get slaughtered.
The UN was a product of the international diplomatic corps, working together to raise employment and opportunity for graft for all of their kind.
I’m of the opinion that the US State Department and other such entities worldwide have slid or are actively engaged into sliding into some sort of international cabal of self-interested freaks who refuse to act in the best interests of their own countries. It’s like they’re more loyal to their fellow international diplomats than they are to the nations that pay them, or something…
Hell, they’re not even loyal to their own minions. It’s all about the institution; where were the whistleblowers on Benghazi, from the State Department? Why do we not know what the f*ck was going on there? One of their own was murdered in cold blood, for unknown reasons, with the active connivance of the politician appointed over the Department. Yet, nobody said a word, piously backing the official story up and down the line.
I’d give a lot to know what Carter Ham knew, when he knew it, and why he got fired so quickly when he tried going to the aid of that consulate.
I don’t feel like anyone, anywhere, is served by the “diplomatic corps”, least of all the various victims of UN malign neglect. The whole thing ought to be rooted out and burned to the ground, from State to the UN to everything else. It’s all been corrupted, and may have been so as far back as the turn of the 19th Century. Today’s situation is just impossible to ignore.
“In the past four decades, Chinese soldiers have had basically zero combat experience, so it’s interesting to see that one of the major findings from the report is that they’re very risk-adverse.”
Kirk and Seawriter hit the nail on the head: almost every single one of those Chinese troops is a “little Emperor”. He’s the only grandchild of 4 grandparents, as well as being the only child of 2 parents.
If the Chinese military kills him that’s six adults who are permanent enemies of the State, ones who have nothing to lose because their future is dead.
So yes, the Chinese military is, and must be severely “risk adverse”.
There is no “clan”. There are no cousins / aunts / uncles / nieces / nephews.
If a mother and father are devastated by the loss of their child, and they blame that loss on the government / Party, there’s nothing to stop them from just going in and killing a bunch of Party / gov’t officials.
So absent an existential threat to China, their military is a paper tiger
The bleeding hearts of the world are never willing or able to do that which is necessary, so they do that which they’re comfortable with.
Which inevitably leads to more people being hurt, because of broken promises. Look at Rwanda, where the UN peacekeepers were basically useless. Same in Bosnia; Srebrenica was a prototypical UN mission.
Frankly, you want to keep the peace? You need someone effectively bloody-minded enough to go in and break heads, breaking things and killing people.
The Dutch who were intimidated by the Serbs butchering pigs in front of them should have been replaced by some Samoans with filed teeth and a history of cannibalism. I guarantee you that if some of the dudes I used to have working for me had been on-scene there, when that “intimidation” thing went down, the Serbs would have been the ones leaving nauseated and sickened by the bloodshed.
The Dutch were just too damn civilized to play in that particular nasty little playground. Just like a lot of the Europeans… I suspect that if the Turks had been at Srebrenica, the “massacre” would have been a far different affair: Mostly performed on the half-hard wannabe Serbian militia that happily killed civilians like fish in a barrel…
Of course, that would have had much more severe repercussions down the road, afterwards. Turks in the Balkans are… Triggering.
“So absent an existential threat to China, their military is a paper tiger”
I remember reading an Soviet/Afghan-Cold War era US synopsis of Soviet doctrine which said (paraphrasing), “no one can question the zeal and determination of Soviet ground forces in defending their motherland and exacting revenge on invaders, but their determination in foreign policy adventures or in radically unfamiliar terrain reveals weaknesses.”
Even factoring out Ukraine for current-year Russia or this example for the PRC, I think it absolutely holds true to this day. PLA/PLAN/PLAAF forces defending the mainland would be ferocious beyond compare of anything we’ve faced since WWII. Chinese people defending ‘their homes’ would not be something any of us would want to face….these are the types of people that would strap claymore mines to their chests and pour through your perimeter by the hundreds. Sudan? Totally different story.
The real question is what about Taiwan. If the mainland population and the PRC military really and truly believes it to be a renegade province as I’ve been led to believe, that island will be washed in the blood of millions. They spilled that much once before when the GMT fled Fujian at the Battle of Fujian during the Civil War in ’49…they will do it again to bring it back into the fold.
The best thing I ever found out that gave me hope was that Chinese officers sell commissions to high bidders. That’s excellent: it means they have no way of getting rid of poor actors that most military’s around the world do as a matter of course.
“The best thing I ever found out that gave me hope was that Chinese officers sell commissions to high bidders.”
No way. They still do that!?! Holy moly, if that’s true the apples-to-apples comparison between US and PLA formations changes wildly. Good leadership is indispensable. That takes one of our formations being worth 4 of theirs to being more like worth 10 of theirs.
If that’s true that is shockingly incompetent. Even the classist British managed to kick that to the curb by the 1870s. Yikes.
I believe that James Versluys is referring to the PLA Political Officers (their version of commissars). The main rank and file officer corps is recruited from the military training academies or appointed from ‘skilled’ NCOs or the general population depending on army needs. The political officers are 100% party driven and want the job as it allows for quicker elevation through the party system. Essentially you couldn’t design a career with more temptation for bribery and graft than a PLA political officer.
The good news and bad news are the same but interlinked. The good news is that when things have gotten really bad and commanders are dead, the political officers get the job which will undoubtedly take things from bad to worse. The bad news is 99% of the time the PLA command structure is probably pretty competent and professional, with political officers being siloed to the loyalty and morale roles they were instituted to maintain.
I studied PLA and PRC communist party and political organization at War College 11 years ago. I’m not sure much has changed….the PLA is an even more stubborn and stodgy institution than our own.
No, it was an assessment by an ex-PLA non-com in a long, involved discussion on PLA and PLAAF equipment and technology (quick take: their basic equipment is very good: ie rifles, trucks, RPG’s…but their more complex high tech is hopeless).
It was NOT a reference to the Chinese version of the Zampolit of the Russians or the woke DEI non-coms of America, it was in reference to normal officer slots. An officer slot is a license to print money in the PLA.
The PLA itself owns around 16% of the Chinese economy, and the PLAAF around 12%, so there is massive money to be made.
Apparently they do things like the Russians: fake drills showing off the skills of the troops…who only learn how to look smart and goose step in uniforms, not fight. I’ve heard tales of people not getting trained at all.
I hope it’s true. I don’t know if I believe it though. It’s too much to rely on your enemy’s failure rather than your own skill.
People like the “Let’s Real Talk” on YouTube show similar problems in the PLAAF structure. She’s Chinese and a very intelligent commenter on Chinese politics in the weird era of Xi. There is a video of hers called “Unrestricted Warfare and the Weaknesses of the Chinese Military Explained By A Former PLA Officer” which interviews a former staff officer in the command section of the PLAAN’s navy command. It is quite enlightening.
I have little hope. They have a lot of plants in the United States to do endless sabotage and we don’t have the will to say “nobody Asian looking can be found lurking around our sensitive missile silos” on a moments notice: we’re going to let DEI kill us.
“I’m of the opinion that the US State Department and other such entities worldwide have slid or are actively engaged into sliding into some sort of international cabal of self-interested freaks who refuse to act in the best interests of their own countries. It’s like they’re more loyal to their fellow international diplomats than they are to the nations that pay them, or something…”
I would really hesitate to judge any country’s military by how it performed on a UN mission.
The constraints are such that you can’t really get a good picture of their real performance, and then you have the politics of it all. Also, Africa…
China may or may not have a good military. I’d suggest that it might be smartest to overestimate them, the way that Russia was looked at as an actual superpower prior to the 24th of February, 2022.
There’s probably more meat and professionalism to the Chinese military than Russias; they’re at least paying lip service to the idea of modern logistics, and trying to learn as much as they can from observation.
Where China has problems is that they’ve got serious economic and demographic problems coming up in the near future, some of which are already affecting them. Remains to be seen if they can power through them…
I would question the Chinese capacity to absorb casualties; there is no social security in China. That’s provided by your kids, and if the regime manages to get a bunch of those single-birth children killed in some military misadventure? Oi. I don’t think they can sustain losses, at all. When you’ve got six kids, you can afford to shrug when a couple don’t come home from the wars. You have one kid, and the idiots in charge of it all get them killed doing something stupid…? You’ve got not a damn thing to lose, and a lot to avenge.
One weakness of the Chinese military is three generations of one child policy in an ancestor-worshipping society. In most families there is only one child to carry on the family. If that child dies before having children the family disappears.
That isn’t a big deal in a Christian society (which we still are, despite growing atheism). Your afterlife isn’t dependent on your descendants. In China it is. Even though the CCP is officially atheistic that does not change the cultural belief any more than it does in the west.
When China had swarms of children wartime casualties hardly mattered. There was someone left to carry the family forward, including daughters (who did not go to war). Now there is typically one son. Who is subject to military service. Who can get killed in combat before having a child
That means China can no longer afford heavy military casualties before society starts falling apart. Which means much of their military strategy is based on waging war without fighting wars. Buying politicians and bluffing opponents into yielding what is wanted by China.
Don’t believe me? How much actual war-fighting has China done since the one-child policy began to bite? Damn little. Beating up on internal dissidents, sure, but that’s not war. I think the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 was the las war China fought and that lasted less than a month.
The UN has accomplished just what with all this ‘refugee’ security and assistance? Besides generating a few decades worth of bureaucracy and graft development that relies entirely on the keeping millions helpless. As to the conduct of Chinese military forces deployed, which of the two sides were they supposed to side with, and just why should a refugee camp have concrete pill boxes and a concrete wall surrounding it? It’s supposed to be a haven for refugees, not prison to keep them in. When the opposing sides took up positions on either side, bringing their armor and artillery with them, it was already too late for some Chinese colonel to do something about the situation.
Not saying that the Chinese didn’t step on their own dicks, but it seems the UN by policy typically under resources its peacekeeping outfits (except for the SUVs and the offices for the bureaucrats) and the usually under-resourced nations providing the troops can’t/won’t insist on realistic staffing and equipment (although western nations have been been guilty of this as well.) Then everybody is surprised when they get overrun or run away and dozens or thousands or millions of refugees get slaughtered.
The UN was a product of the international diplomatic corps, working together to raise employment and opportunity for graft for all of their kind.
I’m of the opinion that the US State Department and other such entities worldwide have slid or are actively engaged into sliding into some sort of international cabal of self-interested freaks who refuse to act in the best interests of their own countries. It’s like they’re more loyal to their fellow international diplomats than they are to the nations that pay them, or something…
Hell, they’re not even loyal to their own minions. It’s all about the institution; where were the whistleblowers on Benghazi, from the State Department? Why do we not know what the f*ck was going on there? One of their own was murdered in cold blood, for unknown reasons, with the active connivance of the politician appointed over the Department. Yet, nobody said a word, piously backing the official story up and down the line.
I’d give a lot to know what Carter Ham knew, when he knew it, and why he got fired so quickly when he tried going to the aid of that consulate.
I don’t feel like anyone, anywhere, is served by the “diplomatic corps”, least of all the various victims of UN malign neglect. The whole thing ought to be rooted out and burned to the ground, from State to the UN to everything else. It’s all been corrupted, and may have been so as far back as the turn of the 19th Century. Today’s situation is just impossible to ignore.
“In the past four decades, Chinese soldiers have had basically zero combat experience, so it’s interesting to see that one of the major findings from the report is that they’re very risk-adverse.”
Kirk and Seawriter hit the nail on the head: almost every single one of those Chinese troops is a “little Emperor”. He’s the only grandchild of 4 grandparents, as well as being the only child of 2 parents.
If the Chinese military kills him that’s six adults who are permanent enemies of the State, ones who have nothing to lose because their future is dead.
So yes, the Chinese military is, and must be severely “risk adverse”.
There is no “clan”. There are no cousins / aunts / uncles / nieces / nephews.
If a mother and father are devastated by the loss of their child, and they blame that loss on the government / Party, there’s nothing to stop them from just going in and killing a bunch of Party / gov’t officials.
So absent an existential threat to China, their military is a paper tiger
The bleeding hearts of the world are never willing or able to do that which is necessary, so they do that which they’re comfortable with.
Which inevitably leads to more people being hurt, because of broken promises. Look at Rwanda, where the UN peacekeepers were basically useless. Same in Bosnia; Srebrenica was a prototypical UN mission.
Frankly, you want to keep the peace? You need someone effectively bloody-minded enough to go in and break heads, breaking things and killing people.
The Dutch who were intimidated by the Serbs butchering pigs in front of them should have been replaced by some Samoans with filed teeth and a history of cannibalism. I guarantee you that if some of the dudes I used to have working for me had been on-scene there, when that “intimidation” thing went down, the Serbs would have been the ones leaving nauseated and sickened by the bloodshed.
The Dutch were just too damn civilized to play in that particular nasty little playground. Just like a lot of the Europeans… I suspect that if the Turks had been at Srebrenica, the “massacre” would have been a far different affair: Mostly performed on the half-hard wannabe Serbian militia that happily killed civilians like fish in a barrel…
Of course, that would have had much more severe repercussions down the road, afterwards. Turks in the Balkans are… Triggering.
“So absent an existential threat to China, their military is a paper tiger”
I remember reading an Soviet/Afghan-Cold War era US synopsis of Soviet doctrine which said (paraphrasing), “no one can question the zeal and determination of Soviet ground forces in defending their motherland and exacting revenge on invaders, but their determination in foreign policy adventures or in radically unfamiliar terrain reveals weaknesses.”
Even factoring out Ukraine for current-year Russia or this example for the PRC, I think it absolutely holds true to this day. PLA/PLAN/PLAAF forces defending the mainland would be ferocious beyond compare of anything we’ve faced since WWII. Chinese people defending ‘their homes’ would not be something any of us would want to face….these are the types of people that would strap claymore mines to their chests and pour through your perimeter by the hundreds. Sudan? Totally different story.
The real question is what about Taiwan. If the mainland population and the PRC military really and truly believes it to be a renegade province as I’ve been led to believe, that island will be washed in the blood of millions. They spilled that much once before when the GMT fled Fujian at the Battle of Fujian during the Civil War in ’49…they will do it again to bring it back into the fold.
The best thing I ever found out that gave me hope was that Chinese officers sell commissions to high bidders. That’s excellent: it means they have no way of getting rid of poor actors that most military’s around the world do as a matter of course.
“The best thing I ever found out that gave me hope was that Chinese officers sell commissions to high bidders.”
No way. They still do that!?! Holy moly, if that’s true the apples-to-apples comparison between US and PLA formations changes wildly. Good leadership is indispensable. That takes one of our formations being worth 4 of theirs to being more like worth 10 of theirs.
If that’s true that is shockingly incompetent. Even the classist British managed to kick that to the curb by the 1870s. Yikes.
I believe that James Versluys is referring to the PLA Political Officers (their version of commissars). The main rank and file officer corps is recruited from the military training academies or appointed from ‘skilled’ NCOs or the general population depending on army needs. The political officers are 100% party driven and want the job as it allows for quicker elevation through the party system. Essentially you couldn’t design a career with more temptation for bribery and graft than a PLA political officer.
The good news and bad news are the same but interlinked. The good news is that when things have gotten really bad and commanders are dead, the political officers get the job which will undoubtedly take things from bad to worse. The bad news is 99% of the time the PLA command structure is probably pretty competent and professional, with political officers being siloed to the loyalty and morale roles they were instituted to maintain.
I studied PLA and PRC communist party and political organization at War College 11 years ago. I’m not sure much has changed….the PLA is an even more stubborn and stodgy institution than our own.
No, it was an assessment by an ex-PLA non-com in a long, involved discussion on PLA and PLAAF equipment and technology (quick take: their basic equipment is very good: ie rifles, trucks, RPG’s…but their more complex high tech is hopeless).
It was NOT a reference to the Chinese version of the Zampolit of the Russians or the woke DEI non-coms of America, it was in reference to normal officer slots. An officer slot is a license to print money in the PLA.
The PLA itself owns around 16% of the Chinese economy, and the PLAAF around 12%, so there is massive money to be made.
Apparently they do things like the Russians: fake drills showing off the skills of the troops…who only learn how to look smart and goose step in uniforms, not fight. I’ve heard tales of people not getting trained at all.
I hope it’s true. I don’t know if I believe it though. It’s too much to rely on your enemy’s failure rather than your own skill.
People like the “Let’s Real Talk” on YouTube show similar problems in the PLAAF structure. She’s Chinese and a very intelligent commenter on Chinese politics in the weird era of Xi. There is a video of hers called “Unrestricted Warfare and the Weaknesses of the Chinese Military Explained By A Former PLA Officer” which interviews a former staff officer in the command section of the PLAAN’s navy command. It is quite enlightening.
I have little hope. They have a lot of plants in the United States to do endless sabotage and we don’t have the will to say “nobody Asian looking can be found lurking around our sensitive missile silos” on a moments notice: we’re going to let DEI kill us.
“I’m of the opinion that the US State Department and other such entities worldwide have slid or are actively engaged into sliding into some sort of international cabal of self-interested freaks who refuse to act in the best interests of their own countries. It’s like they’re more loyal to their fellow international diplomats than they are to the nations that pay them, or something…”
Of course.
This is a really good explanation of why:
https://chamomilehasa.blog/2020/01/24/multiplayer-team-sizes/