The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

Following the 2 hours of field firing and the departure
of the presidential motorcades, the military eased up
and confessed in a whisper that there had been surprises.
The Chinese, for example, refused for a very long
time to rehearse the assault. Wrongfully, it turned out.
During the general run-through and at the exercises
themselves directly five of the servicemen’s parachutes
failed to open. . . .
But we observed with interest how every day, armed
with pans, the Chinese strewed with crushed stone the
places where their armored equipment passed: our hillocks
were too much for their light six-wheel APCs. . . .
And one further story: at one rehearsal an absent-minded
Chinese tank driver accidentally pulled the trigger.
In the adjacent village the blank shell destroyed a barn,
fragments of which killed three geese. So casualties
were not avoided, for all that. . . .
Foreign reporters viewed all this and hastened to share
their conclusions with the viewers and readers. Each of
them probably observed that “the armies operated very
formidably, and the peaceful population had practically
no chance of survival in such concentrated carnage. . .” 39
There is a language barrier between the Russian and
Chinese military servicemen. . . . The national military
contingents are guided by their commanders in their
native language, but there are 200 interpreters who are
helping to overcome the language barrier during interaction
between the military of the two countries. . .
. Russian military converse with their colleagues from
other SCO countries exclusively in Russian. . . .
The official also said that the first joint training of the
military contingents of Russia, China, and Kazakhstan
on August 6 had shown that “we have certain complaints
about how China’s army aviation approaches
the targets and strikes to destroy the enemy.” 40
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