The Chinese have been replacing a lot of officers with NCOs, now that they have more senior, and seasoned, NCOs as well. The NCO schools currently turns out 50,000 graduates a year. Most of these are junior sergeants (the first two, of six, NCO ranks). For the first four grades, you have to serve 3-4 years in a rank before getting promoted. For the highest two ranks, it's 5-9 years. In peacetime, your most senior Chinese NCOs (Sergeant Major in Western parlance) will be guys in their 40s or 50s, with over a quarter century of military experience. In about 20 years, China will have tens of thousands of these Sergeant Majors. These are the NCOs who get things done, in peace or war. Without them, you just have lot of poorly led men with guns. With those trained and experienced NCOs, you have a force that can match anything in the West.
After the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the Chinese began a program of education this middle rank of sergeants to match what they correctly determined was a key strength of our miltiary.
I can hope that there are cultural problems with maintaining this approach long term. Perhaps a totalitarian state cannot really replicate our NCO corps that has hundreds of years of tradition behind it.
But if China can pull this off, they will have laid the foundation to fight us on even terms. Should it come to a fight, of course. That too remains to be seen.
