What's Wrong With China's Army?
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In the “century of humiliation” that President Xi Jinping often evokes for his goal of turning China into a great power, one particular episode resonates: The defeat of China’s navy by Japan in 1894.
The Battle of Yalu in the Yellow Sea was a mortifying defeat in the first Sino-Japanese war, a conflict that China’s leaders assumed they would win against a smaller, if recently modernized opponent.