Mobilizing to embrace the future

By Li Xiaokun (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-07 13:45

When Wan Yi turned 20 on Jan 1, it marked not just a new year but also a major phase in his life.

Unlike the past few years when he had celebrated it with his classmates at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, Wan spent his birthday in a remote army barrack in neighboring Hebei province.

The sophomore of Tsinghua's elite department of automation had just disrupted his studies to join the army, one of tens of thousands of other college students across the country attracted by this winter's new military recruitment policies.

New recruits of the Ningxia Hui autonomous region's armed police receive training in Yingchuan, capital of the region January 5, 2008. About 90 percent of the new recruits were born after 1990. [China Daily]

"I'm not the only one from Tsinghua, we have two boys and one girl joining the military this year," Wan told China Daily at the departure ceremony for a batch of new recruits leaving Beijing at the Beijing West Railway Station on Dec 10.

"We're very proud of starting this journey to realize our dream," Wan said.

In autumn last year, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) enhanced its requirements for new soldiers. For decades, the army was content on drawing rural junior high school graduates and urban unemployed middle school graduates into its rank and file. But the new requirements were created to attract graduates from colleges, middle schools and vocational institutes as part of efforts to modernize the military.

According to the PLA Daily, more than 10,000 college students joined the army last year, much higher than the figure for the previous year.

The website of the official Xinhua News Agency even put the move among its top 10 domestic news of the military for 2008.

Wan Yi learned of the new recruitment policies on campus in November last year.

"The recruiters arranged several kiosks at Tsinghua to introduce their policies and I decided to join the military as soon as I learned I could resume my studies after serving two years in the army," he said.

"I remember scenes of the PLA battling the flood that swept China in 1998, and saw them devoting themselves to fighting the ice and snowstorms at the beginning of 2008 and relief work after the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan province," Wan said.

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