Young people in China who have just joined the army are moving to places where they are needed the most on a national scale. Among them, college students and graduates form the majority.
On Sunday, 250 newly recruited soldiers from Beijing set off from the capital to the units they belong to by high-speed railway. According to the staff in charge of the recruitment in Beijing, for the first time, the proportion of college graduates surpassed 80 percent of the newly recruited soldiers. Excellent young people of higher education were given priority, which largely raised the quality of this year's recruits.
This is also the case nationwide, including in places like Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hebei Province, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and so on. In Yuexiu district of Guangzhou, 83 percent of the newly recruited soldiers are college students. In Shenzhen, the proportion reaches 74 percent, a 12 percent increase from last year.
In Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, each of the 51 college students and graduates who are recruited into the army this year received an award of 5,000 yuan ($771.93) as encouragement.
To attract more college students to the army, different cities and provinces nationwide have put forward preferential policies in terms of school recruitment, employment, subsidies, and so on, which is in line with China's ongoing quality-oriented military reform focusing on optimizing the army's structure and building an elite combat force.
By the end of August, the number of college students who entered their names for military recruiment reached 1.07 million, an increase of 57,000 from last year.
