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East Asian military history has been dominated by one document: Sun Tzu's the Art of War. The General himself has been a brilliant strategist, tactician, and logistician. However, Chinese historians and generals have emphasized strategic intent over tactical and logistical requirements. As a result, quotes such as "Know your enemy; know yourself and you will never be defeated in a thousand battles" have been stressed over basic requirements such as camping near water or grabbing the high ground for battle. The moves on the chessboard have become more important than the pawns or their positions.

Perhaps, the greatest influence on the PLA has to be Mao Tse-Tung and his People's War Concept. Even today, the result of that doctrine has a strong influence on PLA's application. Vietnam's General Vo Nguyen Giap forever immortalizes this strategy.

When the enemy attacks, we retreat. When the enemy stalls, we harass. When the enemy retreats, we attack.

However, such emphasis strongly implies passive instead of active defence. This severely limited the PLA's development of formation warfare. The main military propaganda emerging from the People's Republic of China (PRC) at the time gave a strong impression of a peasant army being supported by peasants. Aside from the uniforms, there were times when it was hard to distinguish between the militia and the PLA's regular force units. They were similarly armed and often seen performing the same tasks. While much is no doubt propaganda, the final result has been an army very drilled in the basic infantry skills but lacking in higher formation performances.

The most recent heralded PLA publication Unrestricted Warfare by Senior Colonel (SrCol) Qiao Liang and SrCol Wang Xiangsui, both Propaganda Officers of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), suggests that China has "cheap" answers against American military dominance in technology and technique. Unrestricted Warfare advocates the usage of computer viruses to disrupt American Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) systems. To disrupt American airpower, the two SrCols suggest that People's Brigades can close down airbases by posing a direct ground threat.

However, the two SrCols left the details to the readers' imagination. Serious military practitioners pressed for details that were not forth coming. Needless to say, it is not as easy it sounds. Western C4I was expected to collapse not because of computer hacking but by Soviet tank columns overrunning the Command Posts. As a result, both technology and technique have been developed for such a scenario. Any computer virus the PLA could develop will not reduce this capability - that is if they can infect Western C4I in the first place, a dubious proposition to say the very least.

The People's Brigade idea has not been even taken seriously within the PLA itself. This time, however, the two SrCols fall for China's historical propaganda, that the People's War can overcome superior enemy technology and technique. However, People's War has never been meant to work in hostile territory and it never will.

That and the fact that every field officer who has been in a brigade level exercise laughs himself silly at the suggestion of so easily dropping and maintaining two clandestine brigades into a hostile city so far from friendly lines.