Comment by r0h1n | Hacker News Reader

Comment by r0h1n | Hacker News Reader

This is the most interesting part, for me:

> The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a “party army,” the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, all career officers in the PLA are members of the CCP and all units at the company level and above have political officers assigned to enforce party control. Likewise, all important decisions in the PLA are made by Communist Party committees that are dominated by political officers, not by operators. This system ensures that the interests of the party’s civilian and military leaders are merged, and for this reason new Chinese soldiers entering into the PLA swear their allegiance to the CCP, not to the PRC constitution or the people of China.

> For that reason, the PLA has to engage in constant “political work” at the expense of training for combat. This means that 30 to 40 percent of an officer’s career (or roughly 15 hours per 40-hour work week) is wasted studying CCP propaganda, singing patriotic songs, and conducting small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory.

>> For that reason, the PLA has to engage in constant “political work” at the expense of training for combat. This means that 30 to 40 percent of an officer’s career (or roughly 15 hours per 40-hour work week) is wasted studying CCP propaganda, singing patriotic songs, and conducting small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory.

I very much doubt the conduct "small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory" the last 20+ years. When was the article written?

A friend is a deputy of her local party group. They still do monthly meetings of this type; discussing the progress of the five year plan, the teachings of mao, all this stuff you associate with the Cultural Revolution. But really everyone just sleeps through that, and goes along for the social activities and networking.

You need to travel to China.

Now, not 20 years ago, if you want to be rich(or do anything by the way) there you need to be a member of the communist party.

And yes, it may surprise you but in communist party they discuss and study communism theory.

The "openness" is a survival strategy for them, a release valve if you wish. No way they could have survived that long without it.

> in communist party they discuss and study communism theory.

Yes, the CCP members believe in Marxism as much as the members of Church of England believe in God, according to my personal speculations.

>Now, not 20 years ago, if you want to be rich(or do anything by the way) there you need to be a member of the communist party.

That I know.

That they really study "communist theory" is what I doubt.

That was the most interesting part for me:

> To mitigate the destabilizing effects of the PLA’s strategy, the U.S. and its allies should try harder to maintain their current (if eroding) leads in military hardware. But more importantly, they must continue investing in the training that makes them true professionals. While manpower numbers are likely to come down in the years ahead due to defense budget cuts, regional democracies will have less to fear from China’s weak but dangerous military if their axes stay sharp.

I am given to understand that British soldiers entering the army swear their allegiance to the Queen, not to the constitution nor the population. So?

The British don't have a constitution to swear on.

Yes, they do. It just is not codified in a single document.

Sure, but do they spend 40% of their time strengthening that allegiance?

How exactly does the UK clinging to a backward tradition justify the Chinese clinging to a backward tradition?

What does exactly make it a "backward tradition"? That you have other ideas about how things should be?

Can we at least agree that being ruled by a monarch, even a titular one, isn't progressive either?

I'd prefer to have a non-political head of state for the UK (like Germany and Ireland), but I'd rather have the current setup with the monarchy over direct control of the military by the PM.

It's backward because it's not representative democracy. It's inherited political power. Even if you don't believe they have real power, it's still offensive to anyone that believes in representative democracy and selecting their leadership. Englishman here.

If we had ousted the monarchy 100 years ago, I'm absolutely certain that today, it would have been considered a good thing and we'd have a yearly celebration about getting rid of them, and we'd mock other countries for still being backwards and having a monarchy.

But no, we still have a monarchy, so "we" fool ourselves into thinking that it's a good thing. You can mostly blame patriotism for that.

Then to who or what to allegiance be sworn?

Can you imagine the horror if someone like Tony Blair was personally in charge of the military?

Don't you guys have a constitution?

No, not a written one at least. Perhaps that's where they should start :)

If you really feel like you must swear allegiance to something, swear it to an ideal, not to a person or group. But if you feel like the armed forces need to swear allegiance to a person or group, why can't that be "the people" of the country they belong to? It's pretty much symbolic anyway.

It's self-evidently backwards ..

----------

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

- US Declaration of Independence

(while the USA is by no means perfect, there's hardly a more "perfect" and succinct expression of human rights than that)

As an expression of human rights, the above quote by itself is useless - it is far too vague. A lot of people would argue that the above is totally incompatible even with the US form of government, for example

A lot of those people are actually in the USA government. Between the Declaration and any government we've had in my lifetime, guess which I'd rather have gone without?

Vagueness is its greatest strength, and it was famously incompatible with the political reality it brought into existence (i.e. 1/3rd of the population were slaves).

What if it were specific and stated "all property owning white males are created equal", which is what it practically meant at the time? Specifics were deliberately left out .. it is just an outline of what we should aim for .. Here is what Lincoln had to say regarding this:

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal — equal in "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere. -Abraham Lincoln

The point is that we all know the UK has a decent, modern armed forces. If you claimed "They swear alleigance to the Queen, ergo they're backwards!" people wouldn't take it seriously. But people are claiming that about China. Should we ignore those complaints, like we'd ignore them about the UK?

That's a dumb point. Neither should be ignored. There are two nation-states I am somewhat attached too: the United States (myself) and the Republic of India (through my parents). Both of these countries would not exist if their founders "ignored" the obvious political backwardness of the British.

Oh I believe a monarchy is backwards. I'm not saying we should ignore it, in general. But when it comes to judging military strength, whether you swear an oath to a party, or a queen, doesn't make your army inherently weaker or stronger.

There is a reason for this: so that the Army (or any of the other British institutions that nominally have the Queen at the top of their org charts) can't be politicized. That's the theory anyway, tho' New Labour tried their best to stuff the civil service and the BBC with their cronies. So when the PM of the day says "go and shoot the leader of the opposition" the soldier or marine or policeman can say "sorry mate, I actually don't work for you".

As far as I can tell, the status of the armed forces in the UK is rather complex - they do indeed report to the monarch in her/his capacity as commander-in-chief but they only legally exists because of Parliament repeatedly passing Armed Forces Acts every 5 years or so to legalize them otherwise they would be illegal under the 1689 Bill of Rights:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689

Also worth noting that we don't have a Royal Army:

"Our Army is not called the Royal Army (unlike the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force) because, after a historic struggle between Parliament and monarchy, the British Army has always been answerable to Parliament and the British people. If you live in Britain today, the actions of the British Army have affected the culture, traditions, government and laws of the society you live in, and, on a global scale, are continuing to do so today."

Which I take as a reference to Parliaments New Model Army that won the English Civil War against the monarch:

http://www.nam.ac.uk/about-us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Model_Army

Having said that, Army officers that I have known tend (in private at least) to be somewhat skeptical about politicians of all parties and very clear that their ultimate allegiance is to the Monarch rather than the PM - given that PMs we've had in the last 15 years or so I'm rather glad of this.

And yet, the Army is comprised of the Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers, Royal Signals, Royal Armoured Corps, etc etc etc.

British traditions - who says they have to make sense!

If the English Civil War, the New Model Army and the struggles between the monarchy and Parliament are of interest to anyone, Mike Duncan (of "The History of Rome" fame) has recently wrapped up the first segment of his new "Revolutions" podcast[1] on the English civil wars of the 17th Century.

[1] http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/

ahem Northern Ireland? The UK army has a history there of using armed force against political opposition. Start reading about Bloody Sunday or internment without trail ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972) ) and onwards.

For the same reason, the US oath of allegiance (not just for the army, but all state officials) is to the constitution not to the government.

Even the "pledge of allegiance" is to "the flag", "the republic for which it stands" etc.

So, no, you don't need an antiquated buffoonish taxpayer subsidized family to swear allegiance to in order to avoid politicization.

Please don't take this the wrong way but pledging allegiance to a bit of cloth sounds as silly to us as the Queen seems to you.

Why do you think I "quoted" it, I agree it's ridiculous .. but at least it's qualified immediately after "and to the republic for which it stands".

When Britain was a legitimate Monarchy this was a big deal. Today Britain is a liberal (in the classic sense) democracy so the tradition is merely a bit of an anachronism.

Just because I find it interesting, the Royal Navy for a very long time didn't do an oath at all (that said, the UK armed forces are charmingly diverse and I bet some of them did!), although non-officer Royal Marines did. I think I heard that non-officer Royal Navy recruits now do, but that was because the army and air force people did and it seemed silly to have the difference, so in the interests of being able to apply one system to all, the Royal Navy non-officer recruits now do, but there was no requirement for everyone already in to go back and do it, so now there's a navy in which everyone with more than X years of service didn't do any oath-swearing, and the new kids did.

All something of a faff and taken as seriously as it sounds! I understand that in some nations, it's taken quite seriously.

The UK has no constitution.

Yes, it does. Just not one codified in a single document.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_King...

Umm .. from the top of that very page ..

> Historically, "No Act of Parliament can be unconstitutional, for the law of the land knows not the word or the idea."[3] Since the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the bedrock of the British constitution has traditionally been the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, according to which the statutes passed by Parliament are the UK's supreme and final source of law.[4] It follows that Parliament can change the constitution simply by passing new Acts of Parliament.

So, basically no, it doesn't have a constitution analogous to the US Constitution.

I understand the distinction you're trying to draw, but a constitution that can be changed more readily than the U.S. Constitution is still a constitution.

But it's less of one.

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