Word: pla
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...west, as the bulk of the Chinese offensive doubled its penetration to ten or 15 miles, PLA infantry captured Lao Cai, a rail center of 100,000 on the Red River. To counter this threat to Hanoi, the Vietnamese marched north to engage the Chinese at Lang Son and Dong Dang...
...attentive to the broader implications of the war. How well the People's Liberation Army does in its first real combat test since the Korean War nearly 30 years ago could provide clues to its capability against Soviet armies on China's northern border. Arrayed against the PLA was a formidable military instrument forged by Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, the conqueror of Dien Bien Phu, whose forces had defeated French and U.S. armies in more than three decades of fighting. The strengths and weaknesses of both forces, as evaluated by the analysts last week, appeared...
With 3.5 million men, the world's largest standing army, Peking has an overwhelming numerical advantage over Hanoi's 615,000 troops. In a limited punitive strike, the Chinese would probably not deploy more than 200,000 men, though the PLA's available reserves in southern China are immense if the conflict should widen. China currently has about 1.6 million men along the Soviet border-a force that Peking may decide to augment if Moscow raises the combat readiness of its own 1 million troops on the frontier in response to the crisis. One tactical plus...
Although the Chinese are not "blooded" by battle experience, Pentagon specialists believe that they are good fighters. The untried PLA soldier, like his commander, may be eager for combat-and a rare chance for promotion. The experience that their operations chief, General Yang Teh-chin, 68, gained in the Korean War may have served to boost the troops' confidence. Being on the attack also confers an intangible morale advantage. The PLA, however, is troubled by years of excessive involvement in China's internal politics. For a long time its most arduous duty has been curbing the excesses...
Hanoi has a clear superiority over Peking in sophisticated weaponry. Although both forces are fighting with arms made in the U.S.S.R. or with copies of Soviet models, many of the PLA's weapons were acquired before the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1950s. The Vietnamese also have some captured American equipment, notably the 177-mm howitzer, which outguns any artillery piece in the Chinese inventory. One of Hanoi's favorite and most effective weapons, as Americans learned at Khe Sanh, is the 130-mm howitzer. Says one military analyst in Hong Kong: "The Vietnamese love...