The Militarisation of Education in China

Epoch Times
Posted: 2007-11-22 13:02:51

While visiting Beihua University in Jilin City in the northeast of China in September 2006, I had the privilege of witnessing, on several occasions, some of the activities that freshmen students are routinely subjected to during their three-to-four-week military training that takes place at the beginning of the academic year all over the country.

Despite having been warned in advance about what goes on by several students, I was still surprised and slightly disturbed to see hundreds of freshmen standing stiffly to attention and, at random intervals, turning ninety degrees to the left or the right as directed by a drill sergeant.

The question I asked my Chinese companions was how long this kind of activity goes on for. It turns out that they can do this for hours, some variations of which include sitting cross-legged or maintaining specific arm positions while balancing on one leg.

One student told me about the difficulties of standing stiffly to attention for a protracted period of time just after breakfast. Nearly every day some students in her cohort passed out as a result, yet this had no effect on the continuation of the morning schedules.

The whole training programme is devoid of exercises and problem solving activities that develop social skills, co-operation and creativity. The idea of teamwork is reduced to doing exactly the same as the other people in the group during drills.

Although, some students expressed to me that they found this experience humiliating and a waste of time, considerably more students, despite the gruelling nature and the rudimentary and draconian style of the training, accept it and even look back favourably on the experience as strengthening their character in various ways.

They suggest that it has prepared them for the endurance and perseverance required to survive at the university level, even for the challenges they expect to face after graduation. The first "independently-operated" state newspaper, The China Youth Daily , conducted a poll in 2005 and found that 69% of the students surveyed considered the experience to be worthy and unforgettable.

Although The China Youth Daily ultimately falls under the control the Propaganda Department of the CCP, which has been known to interfere with the paper in the past, the generally favourable results are nevertheless consistent with what we might expect of people being raised in a totalitarian society with such social programmes and other regime-specific phenomena being deeply embedded in their psyche. The military training in high schools and tertiary institutions was first established in 1985, yet on April 21 this year the Ministry of Education felt it necessary to formalise the training--which is carried out under the supervision of the People's Liberation Army (PLA)--throughout the country.

Accompanying a list of other changes, the training was finally made unequivocally compulsory. It is unlikely that the primary motivation for the training is a recruitment drive for the PLA, as the overwhelming majority of its recruits have consistently come from the poor rural population and only a few thousand university students are recruited each year.

Further, despite its being promoted as an effort to increase students' personal discipline and sense of national unity, the training appears to be an attempt to reduce the potential for rebellion and resistance against the state and its institutions.

This is evidenced by the response to the pro-democracy demonstrations and the June 4, Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. In September 1989, first year university students attending Beijing and Shanghai Fudan Universities were suddenly required to participate in a year's military training.

In the following September this was extended to other universities and colleges around the country and was only reduced to its current length in 1993.

Despite the various indicators that demonstrate continuing growth in the Chinese economy, the prospects of gaining employment for university students have been getting worse in recent years, as has the general situation of the majority of working Chinese.

China has the highest tertiary population in the world with around 23 million enrolled students. This year, it is expected that 60% of the 4.13 million graduates will be unable to find employment of any kind.

This is compounded by the fact that many graduates from 2005 and 2006 still have not found work. Further, much of the work that graduates do find is not what they are qualified to do; instead, many are forced to take menial jobs with no future, low salaries and low status for indefinitely long periods of time.

In this regard, many tertiary graduates are in no better a situation than the uneducated migrant workers.

Additionally, because of the high and increasing costs of education, many of the poorer graduates, whose families made extraordinary efforts to put them through university, either have substantial debts or have spent large amounts of their parents' money in the process with little to no reward.

Despite this worsening situation, tertiary institutions are heading for a gradual increase in the number of students well into the future. The authorities estimate that by 2050 around 50 % of school graduates will continue their education, up from 10 % projected for 2010. The situation is exacerbated by the number of tertiary institutions, now totalling around 2000 of which, in 2006, there were 605 universities providing degrees. Those students coming from less respected universities, of which there are obviously many, are typically the ones that have the most trouble finding gainful employment.

Beihua University, for instance, ranks in the bottom third in the country and many students expressed their fears to me about their future job prospects.

In the neighbouring city of Changchun an annual jobs fair is held where employers can meet with students and graduates. Many students from Beihua University do not attend because of the well-known negative experiences of other students that have gone before them--they would be in competition with those from the highly respected Jilin University of Changchun, which was ranked either as 8th or 9th in the country in 2006 in two of the ranking systems. The Chinese regime is acutely aware of the growing problems as there have been several incidents recently at different universities that have become violent. For example, on June 15, 10,000 of the 13,000 student population rioted, clashing with police, in the private Shengda Economic, Trade and Management College in Zhengzhou city in central China. The college is affiliated with the relatively prestigious Zhengzhou University. Students were angered upon learning that their diplomas would reveal that they attended the college rather than Zhengzhou University, as promised in advertisements, thus diminishing their job prospects. Given the recent riots occurred well after military training was introduced, it is unlikely that the programme could ever have the unconditional result of pacifying the population regardless of the severity of the social conditions they face. The potential problems that could arise from the worsening prospects for graduates--not to mention the rest of the working poor--are formidable and intractable, even for the audacious CCP.

Massive changes in the nation's economic trajectory and values need to be made to alleviate the increasing tensions and to foster a modicum of the elusive harmony the regime claims to seek. The CCP of the past could probably be counted on to come up with an effective but brutal suppression strategy, but can today's more constrained and internationally-entangled regime do the same? Displacing the promises associated with the development of the economy over the past three decades with dimming future prospects that include labour exploitation and low and relatively stagnant wages that fall behind inflation are bound to have profound social effects.

A few weeks of military training could well end up working against the CCP by giving a growing percentage of the population the stamina and determination to demand appreciable change rather than more measures designed to sustain the regime's policies and power.