this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
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Obviously they would never do that, and for very good reasons. But let's assume hypothetically that we lived in an alternate universe where they would.
I would personally love be part of something that i can really say is changing the world for the better, even in peacetime with disaster relief work.
But i'm 99% sure it would be impossible to convince my wife to move to China. Also i'd be worried about dragging down the quality of the PLA. Sometimes armies don't necessarily benefit from just having more people if those people are incompetent and out of shape. Now, i don't know about incompetent because i might have one or two skills that could be useful, but given that i'm heading towards 40 now i'm definitely not in the kind of physical shape that you'd want from a new recruit. Though i suppose that depends what kind of role they assign you to.
So i don't know. Interesting hypothetical to think about. But it's an extremely unrealistic fantasy that could never happen, so the question is kind of moot.
A better question is: would you join a People's Liberation Army in your own country?
Easy yes
That's a good question. I'm not sure. It would require working with people who want me dead. I wonder if homosexual Cubans had this dilemma as they assisted those who would persecute them after revolution.
It all comes down to what you view as being the primary contradiction that you are facing. To fight the Japanese imperialists, the Chinese communists allied with the Nationalists who had just massacred communists en masse all across China and forced the remnants to embark on the Long March. After the war against the Japanese occupation was over, the struggle against the Nationalists resumed.
Ideally we would like the struggle against the reactionary elements in our own anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements to not have to end up in an actual war, but be resolved through an internal political and ideological struggle after the revolution.