Every September, military uniforms become a common sight at university campuses around China. It’s not a sudden influx of soldiers — though there are some of those around, too. The military-clad teenagers are actually China’s newest university students. Before starting classes, all college freshmen in China must undergo a few weeks of military training.
At Huda, pick-up basketball games have been replaced on the athletic courts by neat rows of freshmen, decked out in matching blue-and-gray fatigues. The training consists mostly of standing silently in line, with occasional practice marching and goose-stepping. The most onerous part appears to be the heat: in Changsha in September, the highs are often in the nineties and regularly go into three digits. My students say they find the training boring, but their biggest complaint is that they get — gasp! — tanned from standing in the sun all day.
The intention is not to prepare for the next huge land war in Asia — there is the professional army for that — but rather to encourage patriotism and obedience among the educated elites. The training program was started after the 1989 student protests at Tiananmen Square. The following autumn, all incoming freshmen at Beijing University, an epicenter of the protest movement, began an entire year of military training. Eventually, the program expanded across the country, though it was shortened to just a couple of weeks. Today, even high school students also spend a summer doing military exercises.
As I watch the students troop back and forth from their dorms to the athletic courts, I can’t help but wonder how such a program would go over in the U.S. Methinks not well.
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