Recruitment and Conscription [zhengbing]
The State Council and the Central Military Commission announced the newly revised "Regulations on Conscription Work", which came into force on 01 May 2023. The newly revised "Regulations" implement Xi Jinping's thinking on strengthening the army, implement the new era of military strategic guidelines, serve the needs of national defense, focus on improving the quality of recruiting soldiers, focus on standardizing the recruitment process, and carry out system design and overall optimization of the entire process of recruiting , and strive to build a new era of conscription work system with standardized procedures, clear responsibilities and powers, transition between peacetime and wartime, fast and efficient, to provide a strong institutional guarantee for the replenishment and reserve of military personnel, and the construction and consolidation of national defense and a strong army.
The newly revised "Regulations" has 11 chapters and 74 articles. Mainly improve the leadership mechanism of conscription organizations from the system, build a leadership system for conscription organizations that runs vertically from the country to provinces, cities and counties, and covers horizontally from the government to colleges and universities; optimizes the implementation methods of conscription organizations, and improves physical examinations, political assessments, handover and transportation, and quarantine review and other mechanisms to recruit high-quality soldiers in accordance with the law, accurately and efficiently; strengthen comprehensive guarantees for conscription, promote the construction of information technology for conscription, strengthen supervision and inspection, and safeguard the rights and interests of citizens.
China revised regulation on conscription put an emphasis on recruiting highly qualified college students and stipulating rules for recalling skilled veterans during wartime. This is a necessary move for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) as China is deepening systematic reform of the military as well as improving combat capability during wartime amid a turbulent world. The revision is a necessary move toward deepening reform of the national defense and the military, especially after the country has revised its national defense law and military service law.
The move also conforms to the requirement for high-quality personnel along with the acceleration of the mechanization, informatization and intelligentization of the PLA. The amended regulation stresses conscription of highly qualified soldiers with priority placed on college students. It notes that the conscription should be conducted based on the needs of the military. In order to guarantee the PLA's focus on combat preparation, the new regulation optimizes the process to deploy new soldiers. Local military service authorities should shoulder the main responsibility to recruit new soldiers. The new soldiers can also sign up directly, according to the regulation.
Recruitment suffered because despite some incentives, the younger, well-educated Chinese that the military wants are more attracted to the booming private sector. That left the PLA reliant on conscription for about a third of its manpower. Every province had an annual conscription quota, with each conscript required to complete two years of military service. The military began allowing more “second enlistments.” China increased the frequency of its military recruitment and retirement to twice a year, up from once, starting 2020, to maintain a smooth flow of troops, the military's high vigilance and to better train new recruits. The change was announced in a statement on the recruitment work joint released by the State Council and the Central Military Commission in Beijing, the Xinhua News Agency reported on 16 January 2020.
The first recruitment was held from mid-February to the end of March, and the second from mid-August to the end of September, Xinhua reported, noting that retirement for military personnel also changed to twice a year. Ren Guoqiang, a spokesperson at the Ministry of National Defense, said on 16 January 2020 that while the total number of annual recruits would remain stable compared with previous years, the increased frequency would allow a smooth flow of troops and maintain the military's high vigilance. This would further improve the quality of recruits and the recruitment training programs, which would contribute to combat capability development, Ren said.
Conscripts serve in the military for two years, according to the country's Military Service Law. University students remain as key recruitment targets.
The Military Service Law provided the legal basis for conscription, and it combined compulsory and voluntary service. All citizens between eighteen and twenty-two, regardless of sex, nationality, profession, family background, religion, or level of education, were obliged to perform military service. Men 18-24 years of age are subject to selective compulsory military service, with a 2 year service obligation. There is no minimum age for voluntary service (all officers are volunteers). Women 18-19 years of age who are high school graduates and who meet requirements for specific military jobs are subject to conscription, and a recent military decision allows women in combat roles. A very small number of women were inducted annually.
Annual quota numbers for both the PLA and PAP were estimated by the US DOD to be 500,000. Conscription in China with over 10,000,000 men reaching militarily significant age annually, of whom perhaps 8,000,000 are fit for service would produce an army of at least 16,000,000 men. In fact, conscripts in the PLA Ground Force appear to number about 800,000, only about five percent of the total potential number.
The system of conscription used by the PLA differs from Western practices. Instead of a general requirement of service for citizens of a certain age, the PLA’s conscription system functions more as a “levy,” in which the PLA establishes the number of conscripts needed, which produces quotas that are imposed on local governments which are charged with providing a set number of soldiers or sailors. If the number of volunteers fails to meet quota despite efforts to cajole or convince candidates, local government officials may compel unwilling individuals to enter service. China does not release data on what share of recruits are compelled rather than volunteers.
The vast majority of NCOs come from conscripts who then elect to continue service in the PLA. Revisions in the NCO corps structure are intended to compensate for the decision to decrease the length of conscription service to two years for all services, and replaced the earlier system which had allowed conscripts to voluntarily extend their service obligation. Enlisted personnel can now potentially serve for up to 30 years, which would establish a continuously available core of soldiers from which the PLA could draw expertise and experience.
In the 1980s the PLA attempted to upgrade the quality of its inductees by changing recruiting practices. The PLA previously drew its recruits from rural youth of politically acceptable families. But the Military Service Law, the introduction of rural reforms offering greater economic opportunities for rural youth, and the PLA's requirements for higher educational levels caused recruitment to draw more recruits from better educated urban youth. Officers were drawn from military academy graduates; enlisted men and women who completed officer training in officially designated institutions and passed officer fitness tests; graduates of universities and special technical secondary schools; and civilian cadres and technical personnel recruited by nonmilitary units in the PLA. As a result of the new conscription and officer recruitment practices, the level of education in the PLA was much higher than that of the general population.
In 1987 approximately 100,000 women served in the PLA and represented one-tenth of the officer corps and one-quarter of the specialized technicians. Women served primarily in scientific research, communications, medical, and cultural units. Members of China's ethnic minorities also served in the PLA, but their percentage within the military was probably considerably lower than their proportion in the general population, partly because of their lower level of education and partly because government and party suspicion of their loyalties.
The Military Service Law stipulated changes in conditions of service. Compulsory terms of service were three years for the ground forces and four for the Air Force and Navy. Soldiers could elect another term of one or two years in the ground forces and one year in the Navy and Air Force. After completing five years of compulsory service, a soldier could switch to voluntary service and could serve an eight- to twelve-year term until the age of thirtyfive . The conscription law also made provisions for limited preferential treatment of service personnel and their families. However, military service was regarded by some as a hardship because of low pay, poor food, lowered marriage prospects, and difficulties in finding jobs after demobilization. To alleviate the unattractive aspects of military service and to help local economic development, the PLA instituted a program of dual-use training, whereby soldiers learned skills useful in civilian life in addition to military training.
The Chinese military would make some adjustment in its national defense student recruitment policy beginning from this year, and the purpose of the policy switch is to absorb more young talented people to join the army, China's Defense Ministry said on 26 May 2017. As a part of Chinese military reform, the 17-year-long national defense student system would also undergo a major reform, and starting from 2017, the military would directly select and recruit defense students from graduates of regular higher learning institutions, according to the Information Affairs Bureau under the Defense Ministry.
At the same time, the military would terminate enrolling defense students from senior high school graduates and selecting defense students from civil university undergraduates, the Information Bureau added. The adjustment of the national defense students enrollment policy mainly aims to further expand channels of cultivating military talents by combining military and civil efforts and have a more extensive utilization of national educational resources as well as to provide broader platforms for more talented young people to join the military, said the Information Bureau.
The foundation of the army lies in the soldiers, and the source of the soldiers lies in conscription. Conscription work directly affects the generation of combat effectiveness and the development of military construction, and is an important strategic foundational work. The State Council and the Central Military Commission issued the 2022 draft order. Recruitment for the first half of 2022 would start on February 15 and end on March 31. The target of the collection is to focus on college students, highlight the collection of graduates from schools at all levels and various types, and give priority to approving science and engineering college students and talents with skills needed to prepare for war.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, a series of laws and policies related to the protection of the status and rights and interests of military personnel have been issued intensively, with complete supporting facilities, and military personnel have become a profession respected by the whole society. In September 2017, General Secretary Xi Jinping replied to 8 newly recruited college students from Nankai University, which inspired the great enthusiasm of young people of school age to follow the call of the motherland and join the green military camp. The majority of young people, especially college students, actively responded to the call, went to the military camp to make contributions, took joining the army and enlisted as a practical path to serve the motherland, and sang the song of youth in the process of rejuvenating the army and serving the country.
All localities put ideological and political work through the whole process of college students' recruitment work, strengthen college students' Chinese dream education, ideal and belief education, patriotism education and struggle spirit education, and improve college students including priority recruitment, tuition assistance, postgraduate entrance examination points, and employment services. Preferential policies for enlistment, improve comprehensive services covering conscription consultation, online registration, physical examination and political examination, student status management, etc., promote the construction of a closely coordinated military-civilian cooperation system, and vigorously promote the conscription work of college students.
The Ministry of Education has also further expanded the scale of the special graduate student enrollment of "retired college students and soldiers", and has studied and formulated preferential policies for higher vocational (college) graduates to enter ordinary undergraduate programs without examination. Accurate recruitment and matching of people and positions to better utilize the benefits of talents.
To build the people's army into a world-class army, it must be supported by high-quality soldiers. High-quality soldiers are a valuable strategic resource for strengthening the country and revitalizing the army. Only by continuously recruiting high-quality soldiers into the barracks, supplying "fresh blood" for strengthening the country and revitalizing the army, and accelerating the construction and consolidation of national defense and a strong army can there be a reliable guarantee.
It is necessary to thoroughly implement Xi Jinping's thought of strengthening the army, establish the concept of precise recruitment, focus on building the combat effectiveness of the troops, and use more scientific systems and mechanisms to condense military and local forces, use stricter rewards and punishments to stimulate enthusiasm for work at all levels, and use more preferential policies to attract outstanding people Talents join the army, effectively provide more high-quality soldiers for the strengthening of the army, fulfill the mission and tasks assigned to the army by the party and the people, and strive to achieve the party's goal of strengthening the army in the new era.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
