9. The quality of military personnel involves the most fundamental issue of the military

In 2009, more than 100,000 college students in China enlisted in the army, while in 2001, only 2,000 college students enlisted, and the total number of college students enlisted in the army has increased nearly 60 times in the past nine years. The enlistment of college students in the army has brought about fundamental changes in the building of the army.

In the history of our army, during the Yan'an period, the early days of national liberation, and the early 80s of the last century, there were several precedents for a large number of high-quality personnel to join the army in a concentrated manner.

In contrast, during the Yan'an period, our party was in a state of non-governance, and a large number of intellectuals poured into Yan'an, mainly to resist Japan and save the country. The proposition of salvation and survival has awakened the Chinese.

Now our party is the ruling party, and we are building a moderately prosperous society and accomplishing great national rejuvenation. In this process, the enlistment of college students into the army in large numbers actually has a fundamental nature. It is not a movement, it is not a call to salvation. The enlistment of college students in the army has shown us a very good prospect for the development of army building, that is, quality building.

What is quality construction? This involves the quality of weapons and equipment and the quality of personnel, and the most fundamental thing is the quality of personnel. This is because, in the final analysis, the military is still a question of people, and whether or not the quality of people is high or not involves the most fundamental issue of the army.

In the past, college students enlisted in the military, which was unthinkable. I joined the army in the early 70s of the 20th century, when I graduated from junior high school, and when I arrived in the army, I also belonged to a small intellectual, and I used you as a student soldier and intellectual, and I thought you were amazing. And today's junior high school graduation does not meet the conditions for enlistment at all, and we require soldiers to enlist in the army with a high school education.

We can see that from the 70s of the 20th century to the present, in more than 40 years, our country has undergone earth-shaking changes, which also reflects the profound changes that have taken place in our country's economy. This change is reflected in the building of the army, and we must start with the most basic soldiers. Of course, the enhancement of our economic strength has also been greatly reflected in our equipment, including the development of our Navy's Aegis warships, the Air Force's J-10 aircraft, and the Second Artillery.

However, the change of personnel is often invisible to everyone, so we say that the change in the quality of talent is often more fundamental.

At present, some people understand the encouragement of college students to serve as soldiers as relieving the pressure of college students' employment and as an emergency measure. Relieving employment stress is one of the collateral benefits of college students enlisting in the military, but it is not the main purpose.

The military is a place to increase social employment, but if we regard the employment function that college students can play when they enlist in the army as the purpose, then we will be biased. Today, college students enlisting in the military has become an inevitability, even if there is no pressure to find a job, it is also an inevitability.

Where is this inevitability? On the one hand, universities across the country have expanded their enrollment, and now the number of college graduates is very large, with millions of college students graduating every year, and such a large number of students reflects the major changes in the demographic structure of our society.

When the People's Republic of China was founded, the rural population accounted for 92 to 93 percent, which meant that the urban population was only about 7 percent, and until the reform and opening up, our rural population still accounted for 81 to 82 percent, that is to say, the urban population accounted for only 18 percent. The source of soldiers is mainly from the countryside. Since the beginning of reform and opening up, the rural population accounted for 82 percent of the country's population, and today the urban population accounts for 46 percent of the country's population, and the rural population accounts for 54 percent of the country's population.

In the future, with the development of the economy and the advancement of urbanization in the country, the proportion of rural enlistments will be reduced. In the next 20 or 30 years, we will see a large number of soldiers coming from the cities. Soldiers come from cities, and first of all, they have a high level of education, a wide range of contacts, and a wide range of knowledge.

In February 2010, I came from two units in the south, one was an army group of the army, and the other was an aviation unit of the navy. In both units, we held discussions with officers and soldiers at the grassroots level. At that time, when the company was having a discussion, many cadres and soldiers of the company came.

At that time, I saw that there were several recruits, one of whom had graduated from a medical university for five years, one of whom had studied law for four years in a law school, and one of whom had graduated from a three-year college degree in computer science. This surprised me very much, because we were all junior high school intellectuals who enlisted in the army, and now the five-year college graduates who have enlisted in the army will undoubtedly be of great help to improving the basic quality of our troops. At the same time, there is also a platoon commander surnamed Jiao, who is a graduate student in law.

Now the structure of the troops has changed very dramatically. These changes began first of all with officers in the 80s of the 20th century, who had to undergo military school training. I think it's been another very big change since 2009, and that is that the structure of the soldier is changing. The proportion of college students enlisting in the military, whether college students or undergraduates, is not very large, but it is a trend. This trend should become a norm with the development of society and the development of education. And this kind of normalcy will bring a new round of new impetus to our army building.

Some people say that the Chinese nation lacks a martial spirit, but I don't think this can be generalized. The martial spirit is insufficient, this is certain.

For example, in history, after the Han Dynasty, the civil and military families were separated. The separation of civil and military families has brought about a big problem: the dance of the text is ink, and the martial arts are just vulgar people who are doing the martial arts. Later, there were many common sayings in the society such as "a good man should not be a soldier, and a good iron should not be nailed", which had a great impact on social culture and social psychology.

In the process of globalization, if the Chinese nation wants to truly rise, this is the psychological obstacle that we must take over. From the Middle Ages to modern times in the West, ordinary people could not become soldiers, but nobles could become knights, and it was very honorable to enlist in the army and fight. The West is very militant, and this is a very big characteristic, and of course we are not as aggressive as they are, expanding our territory through aggression. We are not like that, we are defending our security, defending our vested interests.

From this point of view, we must also build a strong army.

Chairman Mao Zedong said before that an army without culture is a stupid army.

Marshal Chen Yi also said that in the past, when we fought wars with the Kuomintang, we were not as good as others in terms of quality, such as playground movements and housekeeping management, and the key to us lies in the superiority of the leadership, that is, the command of campaigns above the brigade level is stronger than others, and the strategic guidance of the general headquarters is stronger than others.

And today I feel like we're changing at the grassroots level.

The change is that the quality of the grassroots units is improving, starting from the grassroots soldiers to the grassroots officers. Military reform can be fundamentally promoted by the improvement of quality, and these people are highly qualified and have a strong ability to accept new things. It is possible that the cost of our military transformation will become a little lower.

There is a company that has made such statistics, that is, the recruits who enlist in the army are post-90s, and a considerable number of recruits are netizens, and they are very proficient in surfing the Internet at home. Internet users make up a significant percentage of the new fighters, which is a very big change. In the future, we will truly fulfill the tasks entrusted to the army by the Central Military Commission and make preparations for winning a local war under the conditions of informationization; when the recruits join the army, they will be very familiar with the basic knowledge of the network, and this will actually improve the quality of the army, and there is no doubt that it will give a very big impetus to the army's mastery of informationized equipment and military operations under informationized conditions in the next step.

Of course, these people are not as obedient as they used to be, and they have too many ideas and fame of their own, which is one thing. On the other hand, you must see that under the conditions of informationization, these people have actually injected a stream of fresh blood into our army, and they have brought the freshest things to the army, which is the freshest nourishment for the army's preparations for the next step of military reform and the completion of local wars under the conditions of informationization.

The central authorities have proposed to speed up the transformation of the mode of economic development, and this urgency is described as urgent. The impact of speeding up the transformation of the economic mode on the armed forces is that the mode of generating the combat strength of the armed forces must be changed, and the generation of the armed forces' combat effectiveness will be changed from the quantitative and large-scale model of the past to the type of quality and efficiency. In the past, we mainly relied on the quantity of personnel and equipment to maintain and build up the combat effectiveness of the army, but in the future we must follow a path of building the army with quality.

Fundamentally speaking, the requirements for the individual are very high, the requirements for every officer and soldier are very high, and the strength of the individual is very emphasized. After the quality of a single individual is very high, it is possible that the problem of taking one as ten will arise, and the efficiency of the army will be greatly improved. In this regard, we must make full use of social and educational resources to improve the cultural level of the armed forces and the overall quality of the armed forces.

When I first joined the army, I was also a technical soldier, and the army had to set up a teaching team to teach the soldiers from scratch what electricity is, what is alternating current, what is oscillation, what is echo, and what is positive and negative electrodes. The troops have to undergo a lot of training and spend a lot of resources, and the trained soldiers are demobilized after serving for a year or two.

Today, not only college students enlist in the army, but there is also a new provision that vocational high school students are called up to become non-commissioned officers in the army, which is a very good channel. For example, we are still engaged in driver training today, in fact, among the enlisted college students, there is a group of people who have already obtained a driver's license, and a group of people who have obtained a computer certificate, and they all have these skills.

These skills are given by society, and under such circumstances, this kind of military-civilian integration, through the rapid development of the country's economy and the great enhancement of social training capabilities, has actually reduced the burden on the army and made us have a greater choice. Soldiers who have graduated from vocational high school or who have come from a junior college or a bachelor's degree can quickly enter the army and provide services to the army with their own skills after receiving special tactical and technical performance training from the troops.

This is a very good trend, and the extensive use of social resources in army building has not only effectively completed the integration of military and civilian use, but has also greatly reduced the cost of military training and simplified the resettlement of military personnel in the future, which has greatly benefited the entry and exit of the army.