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Z,
The PLA Senior Staff is by no means ready nor willing to take on the US. General Cao, the current Minister of Defence stated without a doubt that he needed 20 years to build a modern officer corps, not a modern army, let alone a modern armed force, but simply a modern officer corps. However, to provide the stimulus for imagination and true modern thinking, you have to give those young officers a challenge ... and what better challenge than the US?
However, that does not mean that they are preparing to take the US head on. All one has to do is to look at which divisions/regiments/brigades are getting new equipment and which are not (same goes for Air Force regiments/divisions and the Naval Fleets). By and large, the army is only modernizing a single brigade within each of the 7 military regions. That brigade more often than not is playing the Blue Force to allow the Red Force to meet and take on (the NTC kind of idea within each military region). The key exception of course are the 38 and 39 Group Armies.
Even if you look at the AF, the best they have are the Su-27MKK and maybe a F-16C equivalent in the J-10 but right now, they're committed to a piece of garbage FC-1/JF-17 just to satisfied the Pakistanis.
So clearly, aside from the issue of Taiwan, the PLA is not in an arms race with anyone.
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Chimo
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