The Study On Chinese Military Service System Transformation

Based on the tremendous change of 20th century world order and the revolutionary evolution of the form of war, and for the need of nation development and security, PRC’s military service system has gone through four major changes in order to adapt the times and the pace of military reform, from compulsory military service, combined military service with compulsory military service as the main military service, combined military service with equal attention and comprehensive transformation of military service. Four major institutional changes have deep-seated domestic and international factors, all factors played major roles in promoting the building of high quality military. Four military service system reforms not only meet military needs at different time, but also summed up a complete set of the military service system development experience and methods.In the 21st century, how to keep up with the great development of military service system under condition of information warfare, improve the quality of soldiers, adjust recruitment methods, and ultimately establish a professional military service system with Chinese characteristics is a new topic. With the "defense equity" problem as an issue around which to mobilize, military service system will face new windows of opportunity. Besides the restructuring of the geopolitical order within a broader concept of security, China’s political demographic development and the new military modernization plan after the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China also provide a window of political opportunity to reevaluate current military service policy.This paper assesses the changing path of Chinese military service system in the past 60 years and the military service system development practice in the western countries, and propose Chinese future military service transformation to all-volunteer military service system will through a multi-stage development path. The paper provides a multi-stages development path which includes 9 aspects for the future of Chinese military service system. Based on the past development experiences, the paper finds out that factors affecting the development of the military service system can be attributed to the politic, economy, security, technology and demographic. These five factors will work together to provide policy window for Chinese all-volunteer military service system transformation. The paper concludes that if China want to adapt all-volunteer military service system, should choose a multi-stage transformation model, in order to optimally suit the development of China in the future.