Thread 17974413

What's the story with why China's military celebrations look more classically European than most shit Europeans do these days?
https://youtu.be/LdDNBfvX5d8?si=2ziUPggcES3rKIMn
Like you can't watch this and not think it's literally the whitest shit ever.
Why does this stuff look so European instead of Chinese? What is the story here?

Military parades are expensive as fuck

>>17974413 (OP)
A big part of late 19th century/early 20th century east Asian history was all of the nations there realizing that their militaries sucked and the fastest way to get strong quick and stop being colonized would be to emulate the west 1 to 1. This was aided by them often hiring foreign veterans to advise them and teach them how to make militaries.

In china's case, the wakeup call was in 1895 when they got the absolute shit kicked out of them by their historical lesser neighbor, Japan. Japan sank their entire northern fleet (one of the strongest navies in the world at the time, featuring two German battleships) with no major losses despite having much smaller force. They then invaded Korea, China, and approached Beijing, taking minimal losses the entire way and not losing any battles.

In 1895 the Chinese were arrogant. They believed their traditional ways were perfect and that the middle kingdom had no need for modernity, they were mighty as they were. Most of their soldiers were spearmen and archers. I encourage you to compare manchu bannermen (their elite) to a meiji grunt of the IJA.

The Qing collapsed in 1911, and any warlord or faction worth their salt knew that they DIDNT want to be like the Qing, firing arrows at modern soldiers who were starting to field trapdoor rifles. They rushed modernity hard, and that came with a perfect emulation of western military principles. "Western" came to equal "modern, effective." "Eastern," with all the traditionalist dynastic retards gone, came to mean "were getting colonized." The "Mao suit" that became Chinese casual and formal wear resembles a western military jacket for this reason, it symbolized a new china. A strong China.

>>17974445
>>17974413 (OP)
To you're comment that it looks "more European than Europe," that's because they primarily formed their military doctrine and culture under Mao after the long march. After 1936 they were really testing and researching new military doctrine. You're essentially looking at a European from the 1930s/40s.

Russia has similar tastes for sharp, traditional uniforms and massed artillery, similar concept, they retained a lot of their USSR military structure and fetishize the 1940s.

Good answer, I wonder then why Western armies aren't as sharp as this anymore. Like look at the recent US army parade and even British military parades have been sloppy of late.

>>17974413 (OP)
nobody cares STFU stop spamming chink shit

>>17974413 (OP)
China is a historically arrogant society, I don’t mean that in an insulting way, but even as they were increasingly irrelevant on the global scale they still thought of themselves as the center of the world, and it’s not like they could have found out they weren’t on account of the fact they sparsely believed there was anything else out there worth funding expeditions for. When Europeans arrived, they called them Southern Barbarians. Southern because they came by ship from the Indian ocean, Barbarians because, well, they weren’t culturally emulating the Chinese upon first contact. When they eventually got their shit pushed in, it came as a shock to the collective psyche of the nation, and they had an existential crisis. Even later they realized just to what extent their military and societal infrastructure was lagging behind and were desperate to rise to the same level of Europeans, so out of desperation they emulated them in every way, down to songs, marching styles, uniforms, and so on. Similar things occurred in Turkey and many other Islamic countries. Think of how Chile still wears German stahlhelms, wears grey uniforms, does a goose-step style march to the tune of Preußens Gloria. When the rest of the world understood the power of a modern, European style mechanized army backed by a large industrial base and advanced, egalitarian (for the time) society, it astonished them. You still see remnants of this today even in the uniforms and equipment of nations that consider themselves to now be better than Europe

Emulating Stalinist Russia mainly. Also Chinese tradition was considered part of the Qing and the old landlords.

>>17974413 (OP)
https://youtu.be/wMT0mae2Dyo?si=KUOBL_T171Ecj8kZ
Just like with Japan with orchestra and piano music and European inspired fashion , the truth is east Asians are better practicioner and preserver of classical western culture, except Japan got cucked out of the more manly militarily aspect following WW2 while China is not

>>17974413 (OP)
The Cultural Revolution was a deliberate attempt to turn China into a Western nation. To some extent it succeeded, and things like this are the consequence.

>>17974495
I don't really have a good answer for that, more modern and beyond my specialty. "They're cucked" is the answer you'll see here, but my guess is that as nations in the west became more pacifist/liberal in the late 20th century that their military became less performative. If your population dislikes war and the military marching around thousands of men in jackboots looks bad. Russia and China don't really have that problem

>>17974413 (OP)
>>17974591
They destroyed their own cultural heritage. Communism really does rot the soul of a nation

>>17974515
China is the second largest nation in the world and the strongest nation in the world. You'd be a fool to not study them while you can.

>>17974591
Look at Republican forces during the 1911 revolution, westernized military tradition was just what you were doing to modernize no matter your faction long before the cultural revolution.

>>17974598
The Han in power now have no cultural heritage with the Qing. They were separated from the last Han society by hundreds of years, even before communism entered China.

>>17974598
I did say “partially succeeded.” Much of Chinese culture remains. The CR could not defeat Confucius.

>>17974598
The guys on the left were as chinese as the pre-1911 "chinese" military on the right, except the guys on the left effortlessly crushed China in less than a year. Why would they want to emulate a losing occupier?

>>17974591
>The Cultural Revolution was a deliberate attempt to turn China into a Western nation.
This is something that is often repeated, but is not remotely true. If anything, they were moving further away from the west during that period, because anything culturally western was denounced as a product of bourgeois culture, just as things in the distant past were denounced as feudal culture.

>>17974413 (OP)
Europe is pathetic

>>17974413 (OP)
They do what work. The white way work, they copy the white way.

>>17974515
>appeal to authority
>to the US department of state of all places
excellent way to destroy your credibility.
i don't care for your "yellow peril" hysteria. the true peril of this world are steppe gypsies (wh*tes)
this world is gonna see the power of communist ethnonationalist grainbrain society the hard way. i salivate at the idea of timmy getting the uyg[REDACTED] treatment

>>17974675
Please actually look into it, they denounced all Chinese culture as "bourgeois" and attempted to emulate western culture from Germany and Russia, while mass indoctrinating everyone into a western ideology. There's nothing eastern about communism.
>>17974413 (OP)
Outdated military gear and old military uniforms copied from the Soviets who copied the post ww1 French and British, that's it.

>>17974715
Settle down abdul

>>17974884
More likely to be a Raj than a Abdul tbqh

>>17974874
>Please actually look into it, they denounced all Chinese culture as "bourgeois"
I did look into it. This period is one of my favorites in all of History. They made a clear distinction between the feudal old Chinese culture, the bourgeois western culture, and the proletarian culture that they were striving to create with the cultural revolution. It wasn't an attempt at emulating anyone, it was an attempt at creating something completely new.

>In order to seize state power, the bourgeoisie during the period of the bourgeois revolution likewise started with ideological preparations by launching the bourgeois cultural revolution. Even the bourgeois revolution, which replaced one exploiting class by another, had to undergo repeated reversals and witness many struggles — revolution, then restoration and then the overthrow of restoration. It took many European countries hundreds of years to complete their bourgeois revolutions from the start of the ideological preparations to the final conquest of state power. Since the proletarian revolution is a revolution aimed at completely ending all systems of exploitation, it is still less permissible to imagine that the exploiting classes will meekly allow the proletariat to deprive them of all their privileges without seeking to restore their rule. The surviving members of these classes who are unreconciled will inevitably, as Lenin put it, throw themselves with a tenfold furious passion into the battle for the recovery of their lost paradise.

>>17974895
>The proletarian cultural revolution is aimed not only at demolishing all the old ideology and culture and all the old customs and habits, which, fostered by the exploiting classes, have poisoned the minds of the people for thousands of years, but also at creating and fostering among the masses an entirely new ideology and culture and entirely new customs and habits — those of the proletariat. This great task of transforming customs and habits is without any precedent in human history. As for all the heritage, customs and habits of the feudal and bourgeois classes, the proletarian world outlook must be used to subject them to thoroughgoing criticism. It takes time to clear away the evil habits of the old society from among the people. Nevertheless, our experience since liberation proves that the transformation of customs and habits can be accelerated if the masses are fully mobilized, the mass line is implemented and the transformation is made into a genuine mass movement.

>As the bourgeois cultural revolution served only a small number of people, i.e., the new exploiting class, only a small number of people could participate in it. The proletarian cultural revolution, the broad masses of the working people and is in the interests of the working people who constitute the overwhelming majority of the population. It is therefore able to attract and unite the broad masses of the working people to take part in it. The bourgeois individuals who carried out the enlightenment invariably looked down upon the masses, treated them as a mob and considered themselves as the predestined masters of the people. In sharp contrast, proletarian ideological revolutionaries serve the people heart and soul with the object of awakening them, and work for the interests of the broadest masses.

>>17974895
All commies say that but are just creating a souless western copy.

Yuan Shikai directly based his Qing troops off of the Prussian military. That's why PLA marches like the one during the big National Day parade in Beijing look so European.

>>17974413 (OP)
People think there is no traditional culture left in China because Mao destroyed it, but these military reviews are actually very old. There are dynasties where the emperor would review soldiers. These parades are modernized but it echoes "the grand military review held by the Qianlong Emperor at Nanyuan."

I think there are three sources that have been combined here. The first is the traditional culture, the second is the "red" (communist) culture which came to China via Russia (and you'll still see that stuff in China), and then there's the "modern" culture which existed in Shanghai in the 1920s but we're really talking about Western influence since the 1980s (and South Korea, Japan, Taiwan), and they've combined in a stew. Elements of the traditional culture have been brought back but updated or rebooted or given a texture pack update.

A big thing in Confucianism is also the political ritual. In Confucianism, the collected body of ritual is what holds the society together more than a system of law. Think of tea ceremonies. You do the ritual very precisely for an aesthetic and kind of spiritual experience. I think there's an element of that to these parades, and the soldiers put a lot of emphasis on performing the state ritual in a very precise way.

>>17974591
>>17974675
>>17974874
People have a hard time grasping the 1960s communist stuff because it was deeply critical of bourgeois Western capitalist culture and the traditional culture of their own society at the same time. During the cultural revolution, there "revolutionary operas" with political themes about peasants overthrowing feudal lords:
https://youtu.be/81LaWaire9U

I think the traditional "Peking Opera" stuff was shut down. But now that is performed in China as an interesting historical fossil. Nowadays, you're more likely to see governments promote a conservative or trad thing in contrast to Western liberalism. Russia does that though China can be very futurist in propaganda.

>>17975059
Anon, literally every state had military parades throughout history but the Chinese literally copied the style and presentation from the USSR which itself copied it from the Germans, there's no traditional eastern style military parades left

>>17975070
The style was copied from the USSR but you're just looking at the form. The form changes over time. But the function of the parade for the Chinese government is actually very traditional and "Chinese." The emperor in the Tang Dynasty stood on a platform and rode past troops, just like what Xi Jinping does. What they've both communicated at various times is: this is a stable, harmonious order under heaven. It wasn't the communists who invented ritualized displays of state power. You're looking at a high-tech, T.V. version of it.

>>17974495
>I wonder then why Western armies aren't as sharp as this anymore. Like look at the recent US army parade and even British military parades have been sloppy of late.
>>17974594
>I don't really have a good answer for that, more modern and beyond my specialty. "They're cucked" is the answer you'll see here, but my guess is that as nations in the west became more pacifist/liberal in the late 20th century that their military became less performative.
I think these parades just reflect a more authoritarian political mentality. It's like: there's Xi Jinping / Vladimir Putin / Kim Jong Un and he's the boss and the military is absolutely obedient to the leader and is operating in sync with this. This is intended as a message for us because they're showing off weapons and saying "don't mess with us," but they're also communicating to their own population that they can feel pride in this thing, but they're going to crush you like a bug if you get in the way. Everyone is supposed to be on same page and moving in the same direction:
https://youtu.be/fezNbo33LUg

I'm not even saying that's bad, but there were relatively few liberal democracies in the late 19th century. Large parts of Europe still had emperors. Those ancien regimes collapsed at the end of WWI, and some (Russia, China, North Korea) became communist which liked the displays of state power, and then there was an attempt to do fascism in some countries which did those parades (look at military parades in Nazi Germany), but those were destroyed. If you watched the U.S. Army birthday parade, the soldiers were waving at the crowd. It's a different relationship.

The PLA was a meme until Xi Jinping somewhat reformed it into a proper modern military but they still have a total lack of combat experience in recent history.

>>17975158
Also this. No amount of training can ever fully prepare you for warfare. Anyone who has ever experienced it will tell you this, and a month of experience in war is worth years of training.

>>17975158
further they will always be handicapped by the fact that officers spend a great deal of time on political texts instead of learning practical military skills

>>17975250
>>17975158
one of the inherent problems with military doctrine in authoritarian states is that individual initiative is not encouraged, soldiers and officers are trained strictly to obey orders from above. this means if the enemy does exactly what they're expecting they'll perform well but any deviance from the script and they get flummoxed. this was recognized as a fault in the Soviet military as well.

>>17975158
Realistically the last war they actually won was the civil war, the Korean War was a stalemate no matter how much Beijing likes to claim victory and it cost them nearly all their experienced soldiers and officers and the three week war with Vietnam in the 70s was a lolcow.

>>17975195
This is also why Saudi Arabia is still struggling in Yemen, rich to afford all the new toys, many better than what China has access to, still getting stalled by literal mountain tribals

>>17975285
It's why Russia also messed up its invasion of Ukraine in the beginning. They didn't understand how many Ukrainian soldiers had experience in fighting (at a lower intensity) in eastern Ukraine. Since the fighting in eastern Ukraine started in 2014/2015, there were regular cycles of Ukrainians who'd go fight for a month, and they built up an army out of those people. Most of the Russian soldiers who went in there were going up against much more skilled people. Now the Russian army is much more skilled because they've been fighting for several years. North Korea also sending several thousand (?) troops to help out Russia in Kursk also makes sense as a way to gain experience.

>>17974572
Imagine if Europe could make animations such as Violet Evergarden, not that I don't like european media such as 40k but 40k is intended to be criticism, not an elegy to belle epoque like VEG is, still, right wing people making cultural appropiation of 40k was one of the biggest gigachud moments in contemporary history.

>>17975254
yeah but on the other hand they can more effectively force people into the military, boosting their total numbers which was a major strength of the Soviet military

>>17974413 (OP)
>spray painted soviet D-20's
wow

>>17975421
Literally
>a fucking field gun
Implessive

I just figured they copied the Soviets.

>>17974445
In 1895, chinks had more capital battleships than the japs which had literally exterminated/assimilated their former aristocracy to the nihhonese psuedo-prussia and embraced the Jeanne école to barely win the engagement
Qings also had a modernization programs since the opium war bu then which your post is more apt for.
>Chinks didn't throw wooden junks with 17th century wooden canons against Isekai IJN Yamato and gundam zeros
>Japs actually went on to use a captured chink battleship the chinks themselves had built in 1905

>>17975679
It was designed and constructed by Europeans, not the Chinese.

>>17975679
They were traded from the krauts, you literally sold a whole city and supplied them with indentured servants for it, congrats it just further proves that even with shiny state of the art toys, the Chinese just suck at war and will lose to Japs on wooden relics

>>17974715
oh look its the pajeet who trolls /pol/

traditional Chinese military doctrine was just to throw a giant mass of peasant soldiers at the enemy and hope to overrun them by simple weight of numbers

>>17975806
It’s strange to know that while China had access to the horse, they never attempted to actually improve on their cavalry, horses were always reserved to a small part of the army and would seldom actually engage, is it because Chinese command was handed to the bureaucratic class much earlier than in the west and thus led to whimpy commanders who shuddered at the thought of actually fighting unlike in the west where commanders would lead the charge themselves?

>>17974413 (OP)
Europeans had the best militaries back in the day so everyone started emulating them. If you were the Chinese army and wanted to get rid of the European style you'd have to trace your steps back to 1800s and then your army would give off the vibe that they're about to splinter into a dozen warlord factions and get millions of Chinks killed and/or eaten.
It's like trying to develop a modern horse carriage, it will end up looking anachronistic no matter what you do because they got replaced by cars, decades ago.

>>17974515
>my paid shilling is better than yours!

>>17975806
The main strength of China's military for the last several centuries was precisely the large masses of people they were able to mobilize.

>>17974678
Everyone, including Kim, is dressed in Western style. Everyone excluding Xi.

>>17974413 (OP)
The Americans aren't the entirety of the west. The US military removed drill from their training regime around 2015 and that's why they literally can't march.

Some other countries like Germany likewise don't really do parades but others - like Poland or France - do and they work the same as the Chinese ones. In some non-european sotadic countries the parades are just wild, you have ridiculous stunts pulled by the parade regiments of steroid-heavy dudes 3 standard deviations above their national average height, but that's another thing.

Also itt is just full of fucking retards. I'll surprise you with things some people itt don't know, evidently:
>Dress uniforms tend to be more old fashion than field uniforms
>Parades are usually done by special units that rehearse them constantly
>Most countries had some form of military parades and troop reviews throughout their history
>Parade marching drills are exaggerated real life marching drills. Most organised militaries developed some form of marches because for variety of reasons(that they may have not realised explicitly) having a unit walk in unison to the rhythm of music tends to allow them to walk faster and for longer stretches, people didn't have trucks and mobility scooters in 1712

We can go on.

>>17975679
So?
That was one of their few military modernization policies, and even then it sucked (their ships lacked functional ammo because corrupt officials switched out powder and explosives for sand lol) and didn't work (btfo at Yalu river)

Their capital ships and armoured cruisers were also all European. The two battleships were german and the cruisers were mostly British.

China was conquered by Europeans you may recall

>>17975401
40k isn't a big part of western animation

>>17974413 (OP)
> Why does this stuff look so European instead of Chinese?
They’re communists, and communism was created in Europe.

>>17974591
> The Cultural Revolution was a deliberate attempt to turn China into a Western nation.
Lol no. It was an attempt to turn China into a communist hellhole, and it worked.

>>17974598
No, Chinese culture survived that

>>17974495
Deemed problematic by our Neolib overlords

>>17976681
> Chinese culture survived that
No it didn’t lol

>>17974413 (OP)
Not enough time yet to develop their own military culture in the modern era, so theyre borrowing heavily from the best militaries around. I suspect theyre on the precipice developing their own military culture to rival that of western nations tho. Lead by innovations in drone based strategy and tactics, and with AI and cyberwarfare providing a new frontier for everyone to explore, it seems very possible china wont need to rely on western military doctrine anymore in the coming decades