PLA Navy Expands Recruitment Drive to Enhance Operational Capability

China's expanding maritime interests require a navy capable of executing a diverse range of missions at greater distances from Chinese territorial waters. While the PLA Navy (PLAN) has made significant progress in modernizing its forces in terms of developing new platforms and weapon systems, it requires highly educated and capable personnel to turn these naval assets into an effective force. This is a shortcoming that even senior Chinese military officers have acknowledged. The point was not lost on the PLA Navy, which appears to be stepping up its efforts to recruit new talents and educate personnel to operate its impressive array of new weapon systems. At a recent military conference, a senior Chinese naval officer highlighted the progress that the PLAN has made in recruiting, educating and training its personnel over the past five years under the 11th Five-Year Plan (2005-2010), and outlined a set of ambitious benchmarks for the five years ahead. The strategic development in education and recruitment of navy personnel appears to be a major thrust of PLA Navy reforms, which will enhance the PLAN's long-term operational capabilities (Wen Wei Po [Hong Kong], May 10; Global Times; May 11).
 
At the conference on talent development, Xia Ping, head of the Navy Personnel Department, stated that the PLA Navy is seeking to recruit more than 2,000 Ph.D. degree holders in the next five years. Without identifying specific types of weapon systems, Xia revealed that the Navy had already cultivated more than 1,000 commanders and technical personnel to develop and operate new batches of marine weaponry, including "large surface combat ships," nuclear submarines and new warplanes, between 2005 and 2010. According to Li Jie, a researcher at the Chinese Naval Research Institute, cited by Global Times, a large-scale naval surface force could refer to heavy-tonnage vessels including cruisers, amphibious assault ships, destroyers and aircraft carriers (Global Times, May 11).

According to Xia, in the 11th Five-Year Plan, the Chinese navy admitted more than 20,000 military officers  from the armed forces' and local academies, and sent them to the Navy's surface warship units, submarine units, naval aviation units, army units and coast guard units. Xia lamented that back in 2001, the Chinese navy had only one commander with a Ph.D. degree, but during the 11th Five-Year Plan, the Navy cultivated hundreds of commanders with Ph.D.s and Masters degrees, who have enhanced the Navy's military training, live fire exercises, joint training, warship visits and far sea missions (Wen Wei Po [Hong Kong], May 10).

In the 12th Five-Year Plan, the Chinese navy plans to train over 2,000 Ph.D.s, which means that around 20 percent of personnel will hold graduate degrees. Furthermore, all combat division level commanders will have to undergo 2 – 3 series of academic trainings, in order to develop a command of informationization, system warfare and to raise the the Navy's capabilities to conduct informationized warfare (Wen Wei Po [Hong Kong], May 10). However, Li Jie pointed out that the Chinese navy is still under-staffed as it accounts for less than 10 percent of the military, totaling over 200,000 personnel (Wen Wei Po [Hong Kong], May 10; Global Times, May 11).

Xia Ping said that in the past five years, the Navy directly recruited over 7,000 people from the country's 20 provinces' 400 some technical institutes, encompassing more than 100 technical fields (Wen Wei Po [Hong Kong], May 10). Furthermore, officers make up about 70 percent of all soldiers in the Navy, and 83 percent of all soldiers deployed on surface warships. In the past five years, the Navy relied on academies to train more than 11,000 officers. As a result, the Navy officers' education level and professionalism increased exponentially (Wen Wei Po [Hong Kong], May 10).

Xia stated that in the past five years, the Navy has recruited nearly 1,000 soldiers from local colleges at the undergraduate level and above. Every year the Navy will select from these college soldiers a proportioned amount to rise through the ranks and go through military academy training. After qualifying through tests, these soldiers will be deployed to officer regiments. Starting this year, the Navy will start to select soldiers from regular academies to become pilots; after they attend flight school, they will be deployed to aviation units as pilots (Wen Wei Po [Hong Kong], May 10).

The PLA Navy's effort to strengthen education and training reflects a continuous codification and standardization for enhancing the Navy's operational capabilities. Indeed, the PLA Navy's future operational effectiveness depends just as much on expanding and cultivating its human resources as developing new platforms, which require experienced pilots and commanders to operate. More significantly, the standardization of training regulations and new officer commissioning is indicative of new levels of professionalism. The expansion of staff could also signal an expansion of the PLA Navy and the growing role of the Navy in the Chinese armed forces. At the very least, these efforts, in the long-run, will greatly enhance the operational capabilities of the PLAN.

[The author would like to thank Tiffany Ma at the Project 2049 Institute for providing insightful comments.]