Read on Twitter
the most worrying possibility is that the government itself actually believes in this mad bluster and in the idea that a war with Taiwan would be an easy victory. I don't *think* that's the case, but it's important to remember how detached from actual military experience they are https://twitter.com/HuXijin_GT/status/1281485296756899840
China's attitude toward military power is this weird mix of
a) constant drumbeat militarism, including in ways that people become inured to/unaware of (military language in ordinary political contexts, attack helicopters and APCs in children's picture books)
a) constant drumbeat militarism, including in ways that people become inured to/unaware of (military language in ordinary political contexts, attack helicopters and APCs in children's picture books)
b) the repeated claim that 'China is a peaceful country,' 'peace is in the genes of the Chinese nation,' mixed with the historical disdain by the literati for the constant military actions that maintained Chinese empire.
c) the admirable lack of having actually gone to war with anyone since 1979, mixed with the problem that this means that *literally nobody in the Chinese armed forces or government has experienced war.*
What there *isn't* for the most part is any sense of war as innate tragedy. There's anger and horror at the occupations of China and the suffering of Chinese people at foreign hands, but there's very little of that Shermansque sense of 'war is hell'.