Once again the NYTIMES makes our enmeies seem more potent than they actually are to depress our morale.
Remember how they made the Soviets sound unchallengable? Remeber all the Saddam had "the 4th largest army in the world", and the "US is preparing 20000 body bags".
The Chinese military is a paper tiger, military success depend on soldiers who are committed, focused, disciplined, and determined. None of which describes the current makeup of the Chinese Army. China is suffocating under its own corruption.
Just give them a few more years and their soldiers will have plenty of motivation to fight fiercely when they invade their neighbors. Years of the state-enforced "one child policy" resulted in tens of millions of parents using ultrasound results to abort female babies in favor of male babies, so that the next generation to come of age will be something like 100 males for every 80 females.
Imagine for a moment - in the coming decade, being a resident of a small, weak nation sharing borders with this behemoth superpower with a huge army full of young men who have no hope of ever finding a mate within their own country!