>>64221937
>I would argue that they clearly knew but kept quiet about it.
>What's likelier, that they need Russia as a trusted ally against USA?
I don't know. A militarily competent Russia threatening Europe after conquering Ukraine fait accompli style would have been *very* convinient for China in terms of keeping the US from being able to focus on the Pacific. And while China has ultimately profited off of a militarily deadlocked Russia becoming dependent on them because of sanctions, ultimately Russia fucked up and underperformed badly enough that a few things going differently might have seen them lose the war in the first year outright/chimp out with nooks. All that seems a bit too unpredictable to me for the PRC to find desirable. I think if Xi had an inkling to how inept the Russian military was, he'd have tried to keep them from invading or at least try to get Putin to go for something less ambitious.

I'm also not sure how the PLA would intentionally keep quiet about some of the Russian military proficiency problems. A professional air-force for example doing exercises with the VKS might find it pretty conspicious that they weren't really capable of conducting operations above the flight level, or against any real kind of opposition. I think a lot of your rank and file pilots would come away thinking they were alchoholic nimrods who could only do basic air missions by rote. Unless you were in an air-force kind of also doing the same thing.

I guess the question would be what measures they might have taken to try to unfuck things internally.