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More PLA Officers Receive Doctorates
Over 700 university graduates with master or doctorate degrees have become regiment and division commanders of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) over the past 15 years.
Promoting more officers with high academic degrees to posts is part of China's efforts to modernize its army in the new international sistuation.
The figure is relatively small if compared with western military powers, but quite impressive as the move was introduced to China's military schools in 1985, local military experts said.
As a matter of fact, China has so far trained more than 2,700 graduates with master or doctorate degrees in military science, said Mou Weidong, Vice-president of the graduate school of the Chinese PLA University of National Defense.
"Those graduates have been playing an important part in helping raise PLA's combat capability," he said.
Among those graduates from the university, Wang Yuning and Fan Jinfa have been appointed deputy chief of staff of the PLA air force and captain of a naval ship of the South China Sea Fleet, respectively, following their graduation with a doctorate degree.
Han Weiguo, a graduate from the university with a master's degree, has also been appointed deputy chief of staff of a PLA corps.
Mou said China is in great need of a large number of high- ranking officers with master and doctorate degrees as the application of high-tech and sophisticated scientific and technological achievements in military field has becoming increasingly intensive.
The university began to enroll its first graduate students for master's degree in military science in 1985, and eight years later it, together with other military academies or schools were authorized to confer doctorate degrees.
And the university began to enroll regimental and divisional commanders as its students in 1997 to be trained as graduates with master or doctorate degrees. It has so far enrolled 428 students.
Experts here believe the phenomenon that a growing number of soldiers with master's and doctorate degrees in military science have been playing a catalyzing role in the improvement of the armed forces' command capability.
Zhang Ke is the first female soldier with a master's degree in combat command and the first vice-regimental commander in the Chinese army.
Capable of driving armored vehicles and tanks, She has published 26 pieces of papers on combat command, including one on the structure of joint battle command.
At a destroyer detachment of the navy, more one third of the captains have been conferred the titles of master's or doctorate degrees in military science.
Over the past decade, the detachment has innovated dozens of training and combat methods, and completed over 100 important tasks involving exercises, patrols, scientific experiments and overseas visits.
To date, more than 20,000 non-combat professional officers and servicemen have been conferred master's or doctorate degrees.
During the past two decades, the PLA has cut its size by 1.5 million in two major strategic moves as part of its bid to improve its fighting capability through science and technology.
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