Agence France-Presse, Recruiting “high-caliber” people is key to a new technology-heavy training plan adopted by China’s military as it seeks to cope with the challenges of the future, state media said May 1.
The plan would ensure that the men and women commanding tomorrow’s army were “brighter tacticians, better educated and adept at commanding the highest-tech weaponry,” the China Daily said, citing the defense ministry.
“The military will establish a new personnel system, which combines basic and continuing education, academic and military education, and domestic and overseas training,” said Shi Baohua, the military’s deputy chief of personnel.
Shi was making the remarks in a briefing on the People’s Liberation Army attended by military attaches from more than 40 countries, according to the paper.
He introduced a project for personnel development that will run until 2020, aiming to produce “officers capable of building informationalized armed forces (and) staff officers proficient in planning military operations.”
It also foresees “scientists capable of exploring key technologies in weaponry and equipment, technical specialists with thorough knowledge of high-tech weaponry performance and [noncommissioned officers] with expertise in using weapons and equipment at hand.”
Until very recently, the Chinese army was routinely dismissed as hampered by low education and an adherence to tactics and technology that had changed little over the decades, but this is now changing.
The PLA now has more than 10,000 personnel with doctorates or master’s degrees, and it has adopted a system ensuring officers are adequately educated before being promoted, the paper said.
The military has 67 educational institutions, while 112 regular institutions of higher learning also undertake the task of training defense students, according to a defense white paper published in December.
In addition, it had built more virtual laboratories, digital libraries and digital campuses to provide distance learning and online teaching and training, the white paper said.
“In graduate education, the focus has shifted from academic-oriented to practice-oriented, from emphasis on quantity to emphasis on quality,” it said.
At the same time, as China seeks to improve the educational standards of its rank and file, it is also spending vastly more on its military than before.
China’s military budget has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, and is expected to rise 17.8 percent in 2007 to 350.9 billion yuan (about $45 billion), according to data released in March.
The double-digit increases in recent years has caused considerable concern abroad, but China has responded by saying it partly needs the money to raise salaries for its men and women in uniform.
This in turn is needed in order to make a military career more attractive at a time when private-sector jobs can be vastly more remunerative, observers have said.
