The People’s Liberation Army has until 2035 to turn itself into hi-tech military but there is one big barrier to those ambitions

Xi underlined the need for higher standards in the rank and file this week on a high-profile visit to the southeastern province of Jiangxi.

One of the stops on the trip was the PLA Army Infantry Academy in Nanchang, where he drove home the need to train and improve the combat readiness of personnel to support a long-term struggle against US aggression.

“The army’s educational institutions were established to study how to fight and win. We must teach with a focus on real combat scenarios and educate more talent,” state broadcaster CCTV quoted Xi as saying.

The trip comes two years after Xi set 2035 as the deadline for modernisation of the military, saying technology would be at the core of the PLA’s combat strength. He added that the armed forces would need to apply information technology and modern warfare strategies to advance. To support these goals, China expanded national military spending by 7.5 per cent and research funding by 13.4 per cent this year despite tough economic times.

A Pentagon report earlier this month said the PLA had made strides in artificial intelligence, advanced robotics and quantum computing, among other areas.

The challenge now is to meet the requirements for skilled and educated military personnel demanded by modern warfare, according to Timothy Heath, senior international defence researcher at the Rand Corporation, a US think tank.

“In particular, the PLA’s pursuit of joint operations reforms means PLA troops need a greater awareness of all the capabilities of the different services, weapons systems, and sensors,” Heath said.
But without well educated soldiers, those great expectations might not be met.

A former deputy PLA commander acknowledged that this was one of the military’s major concerns.
“The standard of soldiers has improved in recent years, but China still lags compared to advanced countries,” the former officer said. “The quality problem is also part and parcel of the overall problem of [the relatively low] level of education in China.”

The PLA does not publish detailed data on its troops but according to a 2010 survey, only about half of its 2.3 million personnel had a middle-school education and roughly a quarter had graduated from university. In contrast, in the United States, virtually all soldiers are at least high school graduates, according to a 2008 Heritage Foundation report.

That lack of education was reflected in a PLA Daily report on a model unit in August. The report said that among the people in unit’s top 15 positions, only two people had a university education. Of the other 13, 10 had graduated from senior high school and three had only made it to junior high school.

One army source said the poor training was a clear and present danger to itself. For example several navy personnel damaged a dome protecting radar equipment on one of China’s Sovremenny-class destroyers several years ago when they used steel wire scourers to polish the device.“Similar cases could happen again and undermine the combat readiness of the Chinese military if the calibre of Chinese soldiers cannot be improved,” he said.

Bates Gill, a strategic and defence specialist from Australia’s Macquarie University, said the talent issue was a key obstacle to Xi’s modernisation dream.

“Better educated troops have become more urgent for the PLA as it has become more modernised and technologically sophisticated,” Gill said.

“The Chinese military will increasingly depend on more technologically advanced weaponry systems, including in the cyber, aerospace, and outer space realms, all of which will demand more highly-skilled personnel.”

The Chinese leadership obviously realised the shortage of skilled troops and has tried to resolve it. So far, it has achieved modest success.

In 2001, it stepped up its efforts to recruit more tertiary graduates. By 2014, nearly 150,000 of the PLA’s 400,000 annual recruits were university students and graduates but retention remained a challenge, Foreign Policy reported in August 2016.

At the same time, the military must overcome hurdles presented by a bureaucratic training system that stresses political indoctrination.

“One problem that the PLA has consistently faced, and will continue to face, is that a significant amount of time is being spent on training and education involving ‘political work’, such as studying Communist Party history or the latest directives of Xi Jinping,” Gill said.

“While these might help build morale and esprit de corps, it probably does not help make the PLA a more technologically sophisticated fighting force.”