Rising unemployment in China due to the COVID-19 pandemic could benefit the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) by allowing it to attract new, better educated recruits, a Taiwanese security researcher said on Friday.
Chen Ying-hsuan (陳穎萱), a policy analyst at the Division of Chinese Politics and Military Affairs at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a government-funded think tank, made the remarks in an article published in the Defense Security Biweekly magazine.
About 8.74 million university students are expected to graduate in China next month, while Chinese companies’ demand for fresh graduates fell 16.77 percent annually in the first quarter of this year, Chen said in the article, titled “Worsening Unemployment Shaking China’s Efforts to Maintain Stability.”
Six Chinese government departments early this month launched a joint action plan to help new graduates cope with difficulties in finding jobs, especially at a time when the pandemic has forced businesses to stop hiring, she said.
One of the 10 initiatives in the action plan is to use incentives to recruit more university graduates to the PLA, Chen said.
“The unemployment wave could lure more good-quality university graduates to consider joining the military, thus helping the PLA’s plight of having difficulty recruiting the specialized personnel it needs,” Chen said.
“We should continue to watch the results of this recruitment plan and observe whether the PLA’s human capital and its battle capabilities improve,” she said.
Chen did not provide numbers, but according to a Foreign Policy magazine article published in August 2016, nearly 150,000 of the PLA’s 400,000 annual recruits in 2014 were college students and graduates.
While retention continues to be a challenge and high-school graduates still comprise the largest single source of recruits, the PLA is increasingly focusing on education, the article said.
Chen also said that China is facing a threat of labor unrest, as the communist country’s true unemployment rate is said to have reached 20 percent, citing an estimate from Chinese economic analyst Li Xunlei (李迅雷), whose report was taken down from his social media account on April 26, the same day he posted it.
China has recorded at least 168 cases of mass labor protests since January, Chen said, citing data from the China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based non-governmental organization.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
Taiwan would welcome the return of Honduras as a diplomatic ally if its next president decides to make such a move, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. “Of course, we would welcome Honduras if they want to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after their elections,” Lin said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, when asked to comment on statements made by two of the three Honduran presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in the Central American country. Taiwan is paying close attention to the region as a whole in the wake of a
OFF-TARGET: More than 30,000 participants were expected to take part in the Games next month, but only 6,550 foreign and 19,400 Taiwanese athletes have registered Taipei city councilors yesterday blasted the organizers of next month’s World Masters Games over sudden timetable and venue changes, which they said have caused thousands of participants to back out of the international sporting event, among other organizational issues. They also cited visa delays and political interference by China as reasons many foreign athletes are requesting refunds for the event, to be held from May 17 to 30. Jointly organized by the Taipei and New Taipei City governments, the games have been rocked by numerous controversies since preparations began in 2020. Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) said yesterday that new measures by
RSS