President Xi is determined to shape a society that is both loyal to the Party and prepared to defend its interests.

By Ian Williams | The Spectator

Summary

From school playground to factory floor, the scale of President Xi Jinping’s interest in the militarisation of Chinese society has not been seen since the days of Mao Zedong. In tandem with Xi’s increased warlike rhetoric against the West are his obsessions with internal security, after a spike in protests largely over economic related issues. 

President Xi sees enemies everywhere and that paranoia is stoking a new era of ‘national defence education’ that will force school children to undergo military training. This move by the Chinese government is part of a broader trend of increasing military and nationalistic education, which has been a feature of Chinese policy for some time but is currently being formalised and intensified through the revised ‘law on national defence education,’ now before China’s rubber-stamp parliament.

The law’s proposal includes military drills for middle school students aged 12 to 15 and an introduction to defense studies, even at the primary school level, to instill a strong sense of national identity and discipline from a young age. The revised law comes at a time of mounting obsession with security, extending beyond playgrounds into workplaces and local communities. Chinese companies are setting up their own volunteer armies—a development not widely seen since workplace militias in the 1970s.

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