An army officer talks to a group of possible new recruits in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province, on Wednesday.

The PLA has got graduates in its cross hairs, as it looks to develop a more modern, better-educated military, the Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday.

The Ministry of National Defense said this year's recruitment campaign for the People's Liberation Army, which starts next month, will specifically target graduates of colleges, high schools and vocational institutes, Xinhua said.

In the past, the majority of the PLA's rank and file was drawn from the less-educated masses. Prior to 2001, college students were not recruited at all.

The latest drive gives "people who graduated from colleges this year the opportunity to join the army", Gao Peng, a teacher at the Beijing Institute of Technology, told China Daily yesterday.

In a bid to ensure the success of the recruitment drive, the defense ministry recently relaxed its vision requirements for graduates - a group known for its generally poor eyesight - and increased the maximum age limit for applicants to 22, the Xinhua report said.

An anonymous ministry official was quoted by the news agency as saying that the 5 million students who graduated from college this year, and the nearly 10 million boys who graduated from high schools and vocational schools represented "an enormous group of high-quality youths available for recruitment".

Li Daguang, a professor at the National Defense University in Beijing, told China Daily yesterday that with unemployment still rife among college graduates, joining the army could well be a good option.

"The army can be as good a place as village committees for these college graduates," he said.

But more important is that a modernizing army needs more people with a decent education, he said.

"The army is now equipped with a range of hi-tech weapons, so soldiers must be smart enough to be able to use and master them," Li said.

"Recruiting people with a higher education is definitely the way forward."

While the recruitment drive has already received some publicity at colleges in Beijing, not everyone is convinced about the merits of a career in the military.

Zhang Mengfei, 18, an economics major at the University of International Business and Economics, said that as the only son in his Shanghai family, he would not be signing up.

"A lot of my peers are also only-children, and that makes it really hard for our parents to send us into the army," he said.

The PLA holds its nationwide recruitment drive once a year. Those who join the armed forces, usually retire after completing two years of service.

(China Daily October 22, 2008)