An earthquake highlights changes in the Chinese society

The great country of China has been hit by a terrible earthquake and our newspapers and TV stations are busy showing us the suffering.

Well, one thing strikes me; how much of a tragedy the loss of their children was to their families. It's always a tragedy, but a special factor was influential: China's one-child policy.
Several interviewed parents explicitly mentioned the one-child family when explaining their tragedy - they lost their only child.

This policy shaped the Chinese society and helped to transform it away from the 1950 PR China. It's not reasonable to expect any human wave assault tactics in the future at all. The PR China needs to value its troops' lives highly or it risks (additional) serious internal troubles and discontent. The population size of the PR China might enable that country to mobilize many troops, but it would probably not influence the tactics as much as in past decades.

I will never again think of the PLA as a mass infantry force. Their attempts to modernize to a smaller, more hardware-dependent army need to be taken seriously.

S O