China lacks combat experience and training may be insufficient to approach that level of learning:
The [Chinese Communist Party] is concerned that the PLA [People's Liberation Army] doesn’t understand the intensity of modern combat. ...
Better training alone is unlikely to cure the PLA’s peace disease. Timothy Heath from the RAND Corporation notes that even ‘combat experience does not automatically translate into military advantage’; militaries must go further and internalise the lessons from combat operations and training exercises. Dennis J. Blasko has shown that the PLA does have a record of providing self-assessments of training performance, which may institutionalise good practice in preparation for modern conflict. Though some of these measures might be accurate, the PLA also suffers from inaccurate assessments of its own performance during basic training and combat exercises.
Russia should worry that the CCP will decide that a short and glorious war against weakened Russia is the sort of war that could give the PLA needed combat experience and focus future training and weapons development.
But China should worry that Russia won't play its role of getting stomped and accepting it.
