PLA Navy Officer Recruitment
As of 2007, the PLAN has a program for commissioning enlisted sailors, plus two separate programs for recruiting and commissioning civilian college students. The first program for civilian college students involves three months of military-political training following graduation from a civilian college. The second program is the National Defense Scholarship Program.
Enlisted Sailor Selection for Officer Training
The number of enlisted sailors selected to attend an officer academy and graduate as an officer has continued to decrease significantly over the past few years. The primary reason is that the PLAN has increased the number of civilian college graduates recruited as officers. The second reason is that the PLAN would prefer to retain its best enlisted personnel as NCOs.
Civilian College Student Programs
From 1994 to 2004, the PLAN accepted more than 7,000 civilian college graduates as officers, and, from 2000 to 2006, more than 1,800 students participated in the National Defense Scholarship Program. As part of China's 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-2005), the PLAN increased its recruitment of civilian college students as officers to supplement the number of officers trained in PLAN academies. The goal for the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010) is to have officers trained through civilian colleges comprise 40% of new officers each year. The two plans emphasize such specialties as electronic information, communications, radar, machinery, foreign languages, and construction.
The PLAN has been testing different models for integrating the civilian college graduates into the force. For example, the new civilian college graduate officers must first receive training for academy before being assigned to an operational unit. The PLAN designated the Dalian Naval Vessel Academy as a training work. It began training civilian college students who already had a bachelor's degree as surface vessel technical and command officers and as grassroots political work and command officers. In 2002, thePLAN began testing the "2+2" program, whereby outstanding undergraduate students in civilian colleges finish a two-year basic course at selected universities and then enter one of the naval academies for the last two years.
The PLAN's National Defense Student Program was officially started in 2000. These students, who are identified as reserve officers, receive a stipend and summer training while they are attending college. Upon graduation, they join the PLAN as active-duty officers. The PLAN has signed agreements with 12 universities to support the National Defense Scholarship Program and has set up selection and training offices at each school. The schools include Nanchang University, Huazhong Science and Technology University, Harbin Engineering University, Northwestern Polytechnic University, China Ocean University, Huadong Ship Engineering University, Ningbo University, Nanhua University, the Nanchang Aviation Industry College, and Xian University.
According to the agreements, students who will soon graduate from the program can apply for graduate school in PLA academies, and the PLAN can select officers to take postgraduate courses in the civilian institutions. Upon graduation from a civilian college, the new officers receive from one to three months of military-political training. After completing this training, they are assigned as "student officers" to their operational unit, where they receive on-the-job training for one to three years. A continuing complaint within the PLAN for some of the civilian college graduates is that, "although their education level is high, their basic understanding of military technology is low, their ability to adapt to working in a military environment is lacking, and their ability to manage troops is weak." At the same time, however, several civilian college graduates have now become key personnel on vessels and in operational unit headquarters.
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