• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

PLA Navy Academies and Continuing Education

Academies

As part of the PLA's reforms discussed above, the PLAN implemented several changes to its education system by creating comprehensive academies and expanding the curriculum beyond a single branch. As shown below, the PLAN currently has 10 officer academies. In April 1999, the PLAN integrated the Naval Engineering Academy in Wuhan and the Naval Electronic Engineering Academy in Nanjing to form the Naval Engineering University, which is one of the PLA's five comprehensive institutions. After it was formed, the university became the first PLAN institution to confer master's and doctoral degrees. Today, it offers courses in technology, command, engineering, and management in several academic disciplines on multiple levels.

In 2004, the PLAN renamed the Naval Guangzhou Vessel Academy as the Naval Service Arms Command Academy. It is the only tactical command specialty school for all five PLAN branches and has primary responsibility for training surface force, Marine Corps, and coastal defense force intermediate-level command personnel, and submarine force and naval aviation tactical command personnel. Since the academy was established in 1977, it has graduated more than 6,000 officers. At least 97% of the current surface vessel COs, 80% of the surface vessel dadui, Marine Corps, and coastal defense battalion and regiment commanders, and 70% of the destroyer and frigate zhidui commanders received their basic training at the academy. The academy has also hosted military delegations from more than 50 countries.

Teaching Reforms

In addition to restructuring its academies, the PLAN has attempted to address two major complaints about its education system. First, the students spend too much time studying theory. Second, the students do not spend enough time on practical application. Part of this problem is that much of the teaching material at the academies has not been updated for years and the equipment the students train on is not the same as in the PLAN's operational units.

To solve these problems, the academies have attempted to acquire advanced equipment for training purposes and to update their written training materials. The academies are also acquiring and making more use of simulators. Second, students in their final year spend a few weeks before graduation with an operational unit to gain some practical experience.

Graduate Programs

As of 2007, seven of the PLAN's officer academies offer master's degrees and five offer doctorate degrees. This is a one-third increase since 2000. As a result, an increasingly higher number of PLAN officers are invovled in some type of post-graduate work or receiving master's or doctoral degrees in PLAN academies. Since the early 2000s, this program has transitioned from technical personnel, researchers, and academy instructors receiving post-graduate education to providing the same opportunities to vessel commanding officers and junior officers, as well as other key operations and headquarters personnel.

PLAN officers are also receiving graduate degrees from civilian universities. For example, about 1,000 PLA officers stationed in the Shanghai area have received master's and doctorate degrees from various Shanghai institutions, such as Fudan University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Tongji University. In addition, PLAN officers are increasingly going abroad to attend foreign war college programs.

Continuing Education

The PLAN has spent considerable sums of money to provide the means and resources for its officers to continue their education after being assigned to their operational units. For example:

• Some units have signed agreements for local civilian universities to conduct night classes on certain technical specialties.
• Certain civilian universities, such as the Jiangsu Science and Technology University, have provided training classes for PLAN officers for several decades.
• The PLAN has also spent millions of Renminbi on reading rooms, online systems, computers, and stocking libraries with thousands of books.
• Some units have designated certain nights as study periods, which can be used to conduct individual or group study.

Several PLAN units have also created officer training centers, which include the use of simulators and training on naval stratagem. In addition, the PLAN has a Navy Cadre Training Center associated with the Central Party School in the Western Hills near Beijing, which serves as a base for studying advanced naval and intermediate- level cadre theory.