解放军放宽招兵规则，吸收高技术人才。Students on the frontline of modernization, Zhao Shengnan and Li Xiaokun report in Beijing.
Li Yueyue's dream to become a solider seemed to be a mission impossible a few months ago. The biggest obstacle: He is nearsighted, failing to meet the newly amended Military Service Law that requires college recruits have uncorrected vision of at least 4.5, slightly less than the perfect 5.0.
Thanks to a deregulation, however, that obstacle was removed and the 21-year-old became a soldier of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) on Dec 8.
Li, a sophomore journalism major, is one of the 16 Tsinghua University students who applied and were accepted for military service. He said the group includes a somewhat chubby young man who also passed the physical.
"If not for the relaxed rules exclusively for college students, I would never become a soldier," Li said.
Today's military relies increasingly on technically sophisticated weaponry, so it is eager to attract better-educated recruits. Under the amendment approved on Nov 1, the PLA is providing preferential treatment and has eased restrictions on age and physical condition for all recruits in this winter's class.
Those with facial or neck tattoos will now qualify for service if the decorations are no wider than 2 centimeters. Prohibitions on ear piercings also have been eliminated, as long as the holes are not too obvious. Other body piercings are still not allowed.
New weight rules permit a recruit to be a little heavier or a little thinner than allowed in the past. Female soldiers can be 2 centimeters shorter than before.
Full-time college students may be as old as 24 when they enlist; high school graduates must be 21 or younger.
Courting collegians
Agence France-Presse reported last month that the relaxation in rules comes as the PLA targets young people - particularly educated graduates - and recognizes that many of China's youth have grown more fashion-conscious and trendy. A Beijing Recruitment Office representative confirmed to China Daily that the preferential treatment targets educated graduates, whose numbers in Beijing have soared.
According to a senior officer with the General Staff Department of PLA, who asked to be unidentified, college recruits tend to be quick learners and thus find it easier to be promoted than enlistees with just a high school education. About half of college graduates recruited in 2009 were made officers this year.
The high quality of college recruits greatly reduces the time needed to produce a good technician, which was nearly two years during the 1990s, said Liu Yi, a military scholar from the PLA Nanjing Institute of Politics. "Some recruits have already mastered skills . . . like driving, nursing and engineering" before they enlist, he said.
Jia Na, the first female college recruit from Tsinghua, believes that psychological maturity contributes more to performance than an academic degree. "High school recruits cannot get used to the stringent military rules as quickly as elder and experienced college ones," she said.
