Of course, if your electronic communications are unavailable for some reason, bugles do represent a no-frills backup option that can at least communicate to some degree. With multiple buglers spread between units, they could relay calls across a larger area with relative rapidity and at a volume above how loud a person might be able to yell without quickly going hoarse.

Auditory signals would work in the dark or in situations where friendly forces may be hidden away behind physical cover, smoke, or other obscurants, and unable to otherwise see hand signals or flags. However, using bugles in these situations would expose the position of any concealed unit, too.

In the end, it may turn out to be that the PLA's restoration of bugle calls for combat purposes is itself somewhat symbolic and could find itself confined to training exercises, demonstrations for senior officials and foreign dignitaries, and reenactments to mark major historical anniversaries. There have been also been similar developments in Russia, including the recent creation of a ceremonial Russian Army unit equipped with World War II-era T-35/85 tanks. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made appeals to nationalism a key part of his governing style.

"The National Revolutionary Army that participated in the Nanchang Uprising on August 1, 1927, already had buglers and a bugler detachment," according to another China Military article, underscoring the PLA's deep and existential connection to the bugle. "In November 1931, the Music Scores of Military Bugle Calls of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army was formulated and issued, and the Chinese military had its own bugle calls scores and regulations for the first time."

The symbolism of the bugle certainly appeals to a reinvigorated sense of nationalism that President Xi Jinping has steadily promoted since first taking up his post in 2013, too. After China intervened in the Korean War, "military bugle calls were widely used by the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, playing an important role in creating psychological shock on the so-called 'United Nations Army' and dwarfing their morale," China Military declared in a 2018 piece dripping with patriotic fervor.