PLA Photos & Videos

Army recruits attend a ceremony before departure in Handan, north China's Hebei Province, Sept. 10, 2015. The new recruits of the People's Liberation Army and paramilitary police force joined their units to fulfill their duty around the country recently. [Xinhua]

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Twin brothers Jiang Zihao (C) and Jiang Zihang (R), who both are fresh army recruits, salute to their mother during a farewell ceremony in Handan, north China's Hebei Province, Sept. 10, 2015. The new recruits of the People's Liberation Army and paramilitary police force joined their units(Basic Training) to fulfill their duty around the country recently. [Xinhua]

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Fresh recruits of armed police force walk into a train station after a farewell ceremony in Bozhou, east China's Anhui Province, Sept. 10, 2015.

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A new army recruit is on the verge of tears after a farewell ceremony in Liucheng County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Sept. 10, 2015.

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New recruits cheer for each other at the People's Armed Forces Department of Ganyu District in Lianyungang City, east China's Jiangsu Province, Sept. 10, 2015. The new recruits of the People's Liberation Army and paramilitary police force joined their units to fulfill their duty around the country recently. [Xinhua]

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Many armies have trouble molding capable soldiers from fresh-out-of-school 18-year-olds. China is no exception and, it turns out, has a particular problem with soft recruits.

Senior officers in the People’s Liberation Army recognize that many of their volunteers and conscripts have been raised as spoiled children and that as products of the one-child policy, many of them need toughening up, says a lengthy report by the RAND Corporation on the modernization of the army.

“After 30 years of the one-child policy, kids come into the army who are used to being coddled and the apple of their parents’ eyes,” said Scott W. Harold, the deputy director of the Center for Asia-Pacific at RAND, and one of the seven authors of the report released last week.

Newspapers published by the People’s Liberation Army have carried reports about half the young men in a unit crying, and many wanting to wash out, he said. Some were reported to have violated discipline by sending texts to their girlfriends. “While this is a weakness, it is not clear how much of a weakness,” he added.

About 70 percent of People’s Liberation Army soldiers come from one-child families, and among combat troops, about 80 percent have been raised as only children, Maj. Gen. Liu Mingfu, a professor at the National Defense University in Beijing, said in a telephone interview.

Even President Xi Jinping, who as chairman of the Central Military Commission is the head of the People’s Liberation Army, has alluded to the problem of insufficiently hardened soldiers. “We must not make our soldiers soft during the peace era, the mighty troops have to be mighty, soldiers must have guts and courage,” he said last month, according to a report in PLA Daily.

The

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, titled “China’s Incomplete Military Transformation,” is unusual because rather than stressing the rapid gains by the People’s Liberation Army, the authors focus on the weaknesses.

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09.17.2015..PLA army aviation helicopter gunships,WZ-10 & WZ-19 perform during the Helicopter Tianjin helicopter Fair

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8750 Armed Forces elite SWAT team with two female snipers conduct training.

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