National Agenda : China Debates How to Recruit Today’s Army : The country wants Communists with high-tech skills. Finding candidates is becoming difficult.

Michael Jackson’s voice blared out in the brisk autumn air, but still it was a slow day at the sidewalk army recruitment booth in Beijing’s suburban campus district.

“I’m bad, I’m bad, don’t you know it!” boomed out the rock star’s voice on a loudspeaker set up to attract passersby. But not a single Chinese youth was anywhere near the army propaganda billboards and recruiters’ table.

The irony of the scene clearly escaped those in charge. Finding the right soldiers for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is a tough task these days. If the superstar’s voice might help, why not give it a try?

The use of capitalist rock music to entice recruits to defend China and its Communist Party hints at some of the ideological problems faced by the PLA. The army faces even more serious quandaries in the fields of training and weaponry.

The Chinese armed forces are pursuing an old goal: to train people who are both “Red” and “expert.” But changing domestic and international circumstances make the task of meshing the two more difficult than ever.

Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin, who has direct authority over the army as chairman of the Central Military Commission, hit key points in a speech shortly after U.S.-led allied forces swept to victory over Iraq.

“The realities of regional wars--especially the recent one--tell us that modern warfare is high-tech warfare,” Jiang declared, according to the People’s Liberation Army Daily. “It is warfare involving land, sea and air forces. It is electronic war, guided-missile war. To fall behind means to get thrashed.”

In response, Jiang said, the Chinese army must carry out the “important strategy” of training “politically qualified 21st-Century-level high-technology personnel.”

Last summer, it appeared that moves were being planned, in keeping with the modernization theme of Jiang’s speech, to make China’s 3-million-strong army more professional by cutting its size, raising pay, improving the quality of recruits and enlisting more volunteers for minimum eight-year service periods, according to a Beijing-based expert on the Chinese military who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A step in this direction came last month with an announcement that new urban recruits for the army must be at least high school graduates, while peasant youths should have no less than a junior-high school education. Ill-defined political standards were retained along with these tougher educational requirements.

But China’s top political and military leadership remains locked in debate over how to proceed. Shocks from the failed August coup in Moscow have provided new ammunition for hard-line leaders who say that military modernization must take a back seat to politics.

“There is a basic conflict between pushing science, technology and professionalism and pushing political ideology. The two are almost inimical,” commented a Western diplomat, who spoke on condition he not be further identified.

The Communist Party can still claim a significant ideological base in the countryside, from which poorly educated recruits can be drawn. But more sophisticated urban youths, who might make better trainees for use of high-tech weapons, are a less reliable tool of party control.

“It’s clear that the most intelligent people in the army realize the type of tactics and armaments the Chinese have are hopelessly outdated and pointless in fighting against an advanced foe,” commented another Western diplomat. “They saw that better weapons, better equipment and better communications allowed the allies led by the United States to cream the Iraqis.”

But those who argue that the army’s political loyalty must come first can also make strong points, this diplomat noted.

“In 1989 (at the time of the pro-democracy protests in Tian An Men Square), if they had a very high-tech professional army, it might have refused to fire on the people,” he said.

“There’s a real struggle going on, and a lot depends on what you see as China’s real enemies--the democracy movement and ‘peaceful evolution’ (away from communism toward capitalism and democracy), or foreign invasion?” he said. “Are you going to have a million Soviet soldiers come streaming across the border? Are you going to engage in a high-tech war with Taiwan or the United States? Or are you going to face Tibetans and students? If you perceive your major strategic enemy being inside your own country, then your major concern is for political control.”

Those in charge of the recruitment and training of Chinese soldiers once had a far easier task.

Under Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the PLA held a defensive strategy of “people’s war” that called for any invader to be sucked deep into China’s own territory, then surrounded and attacked by soldiers closely linked with the country’s immense population. When the PLA joined the 1950-53 Korean War, it used human-wave tactics backed up with only low-technology arms. The Chinese suffered huge losses but fought U.S.-led forces to a stalemate.

“Human-wave tactics don’t need much brains--they just need brawn,” commented one of the diplomats. “(Now) they need to improve the educational standard of some of their troops if they’re going to operate complex machinery.”

China has had some sophisticated weaponry for decades, of course--most significantly, nuclear weapons. But strategic missiles are a different matter from the sophisticated battlefield arms of today.

In the 1960s and 1970s, China could isolate its military scientists and technicians at places like Lop Nur, a nuclear research and testing site in the far western Taklimakan Desert, without risk that the scientific spirit of free inquiry would spill over to the military as a whole. Today, at least some front-line soldiers must know something about technology.

The official New China News Agency carried an unusual report last week on measures taken to equip the PLA for use of “anti-chemical warfare, antiaircraft artillery, tanks, armored cars, computers and modern telecommunications facilities.”

The agency reported that a group army under the Beijing Military Area Command can now process 80% of its battlefield documents and analyses by computer. This group army has trained 4,000 “sharpshooters, crack gunners and outstanding technical soldiers,” the report said.

The report added that “following the Gulf War” the group army has “strengthened training and drills of antiaircraft, anti-electronic, anti-chemical and anti-nuclear warfares.”

During the 1980s, major steps were taken toward more professionalism in China’s army. Domestic security responsibilities--and about 600,000 men--were switched to the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force that has links with the PLA but is not part of the official army. The PLA, which includes land, sea and air forces, was reduced by about 30% to its present 3 million.

At the same time, however, the PLA faced growing difficulties in enlisting good recruits. China technically has universal conscription, but for decades the number of peasant youths who wished to join vastly outnumbered the available slots. Under the concept of “people’s war,” these recruits made perfectly good soldiers, and most were excited to leave the poverty of China’s countryside for the security and prestige of the PLA.

As economic reforms giving peasants control of the land took place during the 1980s, village life became more comfortable and the PLA became a less attractive option. Urban youths had even less desire to join. The PLA and the People’s Armed Police still manage to fill their ranks. But by the late 1980s, Chinese media were full of stories about unqualified recruits.

“When leaders in one artillery company sent a new soldier claiming to be a high school graduate to the instructors platoon, it was discovered that he could not even calculate 15 plus 8,” the People’s Daily complained in an early 1989 commentary. “An army without education is a stupid army. In today’s rapid development of military sciences and technologies, be it in the air force, the navy, the missile units, the signal corps or the infantry, highly educated fighters are needed to handle the weapons and to accomplish their missions.”

The article complained that out of 150 recruits assigned to one particular unit, “most of them were found to have committed offenses like fighting, gambling, theft and hooliganism.”

“Fourteen of them had been detained by the public security organs before,” it continued. “One was wanted for murder, one had escaped from prison, while another headed a criminal gang.”

The People’s Daily complained that some “government leaders and comrades of conscription organs . . . contended that in time of peace, it would not matter much if the quality of soldiers was slightly poor.”

Such cases also reflect the resurgence of a traditional Chinese viewpoint captured in the jingle: “Good iron is not made into nails; good men are not made into soldiers.” This attitude had been nearly wiped out during the days of high PLA prestige in the 1950s.

The 1989 crackdown on the Tian An Men pro-democracy demonstrators, in which the PLA and the People’s Armed Police killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, further damaged the army’s image.

Against this background, the debate over what kind of individuals to bring into the army, and how to train them, is especially sensitive.

“From the political side, it helps to have people who are poorly educated, have low self-esteem and maybe even have a chip on the shoulder, (who) resent all these long-haired, flabby sorts who have nothing better to do than protest,” one of the diplomats said.

The diplomat noted that this type is especially predominant in the People’s Armed Police, which takes in recruits through the same process as the army.

“I’ve chatted with quite a few of them,” he commented. “Every single one of them is a farm boy--a real hick.”

Most foreign observers in Beijing believe that if such uneducated soldiers and paramilitary police are ordered to fire on crowds of demonstrators or rioters in some future succession struggle or popular uprising, they will probably obey.

The issue of what kind of military force to build is tied up with maneuvering over the ultimate succession to senior leader Deng Xiaoping, 87.

In the broadest terms, a leaner, more professional, better-trained army is generally viewed as favorable toward reformers who wish to focus the nation’s efforts on economic development, and who might eventually tolerate some political liberalization.

A highly indoctrinated army based on the peasantry, with only secondary emphasis on technical abilities, is viewed more as a tool for maintaining the power of hard-line Communist leaders.

The most prominent hard-line ideologue in this battle is Yang Baibing, director of the General Political Department of the PLA and the younger half-brother of Chinese President Yang Shangkun. Defense Minister Qin Jiwei and Liu Huaqing, a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, are widely viewed as professional military men who favor technical modernization while also preserving firm political control. General Secretary Jiang, as a technocrat who heads both the Communist Party and the military structure, is positioned to stress both modernization and political reliability.

The most intense reformist sentiment within the military is presumed to be below this level, among professional officers who were appalled by the use of the army against the people of China during the Tian An Men crackdown.

“The younger officers--50s and below--want nice tanks, like any soldiers, and gee-whiz rockets that can win them wars,” commented a diplomat. “There is some discontent in the officer corps, of people who don’t like to see the army used as a blunt object, who don’t see that as their role.”

Officers at this level, however, will probably have little direct impact on the inevitable succession struggle after Deng finally leaves the scene. Their impact on China’s fate lies a decade or two into the future.

The Region’s Armies Here is a breakdown of the armed forces of China and some of its neighbors:

Army Navy Air Force Total China 2,300,000 260,000 470,000 3,030,000 Soviet Union 1,400,000 450,000 420,000 4,200,000* India 1,100,000 55,000 110,000 1,265,000 North Korea 1,000,000 41,000 70,000 1,110,000 Vietnam 900,000 31,000 10,000 1,041,000** South Korea 650,000 60,000 40,000 750,000 Taiwan 270,000 30,000 70,000 370,000 Japan 156,100 44,000 46,300 246,400

*Soviet military also includes Troops of Air Defense and Strategic Rocket Forces. Troops are also maintained by Ministry of Internal Affairs and state security (formerly KGB). **Vietnam total includes a separate Air Defense Force of 100,000. Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance 1991-92, Los Angeles Times