"Through my visits in the United States over the past couple days, I have been surprised by the sophistication of the U.S. military and its weapons and doctrines and so on," he said. "I can tell you that China does not have the capability to challenge the United States."
Bull. General Chen Bingde, chief of staff of the PLA, conveniently told us exactly the reason we justify military-to-military exchanges.
Remember, the best deception doesn't hide what you do from your enemy. That's too hard to do for very long. The best deception provides evidence to your enemy of what the enemy already believes (wrongly) is the reason for what they see you doing. Validate their preconceptions and you've won the deception war.
But while we eagerly listen to what the Chinese say about our military-to-military exchanges, I don't think the Chinese are learning what we are teaching them:
We are officially in favor of these missions because we believe that if the Chinese see how powerful we are, they won't try to fight us.
This is a crock. The Chinese know we are technically more advanced. What they think is that we are too pampered to fight them. And seeing our nice barracks and PXs with Chanel No. 5 won't convince them that we are hard warriors able to absorb high casualties. Seeing our military up close will simply give them insights into fighting us or at least cause them to believe that they have insights into fighting us[.]
Have no doubt that the Chinese military believes that if they challenge our military on ground of their own choosing that they will defeat us.
