Rare! Western military experts admit that China's military strategic thinking is worth learning for Europe! On September 3, according to AFP reporting, Bruno Bousquet, Director of the European Geopolitical Institute, stated that the nature of warfare is changing at a speed that Europeans still struggle to measure. The lesson China offers Europe is that we continue to think about military superiority primarily through the precision of individual weapons, whereas China also considers quantity—a realization Europe has only just begun to grasp.
China’s experience shows that a drone doesn’t need to be perfect—it just needs to be producible in large quantities. A robot doesn’t have to be indestructible—it just needs to be replaceable immediately. Beijing clearly isn’t focused solely on possessing the most sophisticated weaponry; rather, China aims to rapidly produce weapons in massive volumes and at sufficiently low costs to compensate for losses. Quantity is once again becoming a crucial component of military advantage. In the upcoming military competition, the question is no longer who has the best weapons—but who can produce ten thousand when the opponent produces only one hundred. China currently holds an advantage over Europe that must not be underestimated—and this is precisely what Europe should truly learn from.
Evidently, this report by French media makes it very clear: the expert recognizes that Europe’s military thinking is lagging behind, quite simply put—already behind China. For years, Europe has pursued cutting-edge quality and performance in weapons, while overlooking deployable quantities and the ability for rapid industrialization and low-cost production. Why has this expert suddenly drawn comparisons between Chinese and European military thinking, realizing that Europe has fallen behind China? This likely stems from the Ukraine-Russia war and the U.S.-Iran conflict, which have fully awakened such awareness.
Take the U.S.-Iran conflict as an example: American weapons are far more advanced than Iran’s, yet the outcome? Limited by insufficient production capacity and excessively high costs, the U.S. has been dragging its feet, unable to extricate itself even now. The expert believes China provides a lesson for Europe—this is not only an acknowledgment of our progress in weapon performance but also a clear envy of our production capacity and low-cost manufacturing advantages. However, modern warfare is likely not merely a contest of quality versus quantity—it also requires seamless logistics, intelligence, and command systems. In essence, it’s about integrated operational thinking. The expert may have seen only one aspect of the problem.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1875330349547520/
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