For its college students, China's failing economy has made a career in the People's Liberation Army -- Mao Zedong's famous "army of peasants," two-thirds of which were really peasants until 2011 -- a more tolerable career option.

College graduates and students accounted for some 150,000 of the 400,000 recruits to the PLA in 2014 and 2015, announced the PLA. Retaining these better educated recruits remains a huge problem, however, but is being tackled by disbursing generous perks such as a better shot at jobs in state-owned enterprises and tax breaks if these ex-soldiers open their own business after leaving the service.

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College educated recruits are also paid better. The central government, for example, increased family allowances to $3,765 annually while Hubei province is giving some $3,200 to PLA recruits that graduate from local universities.

While soldiering is mainly a deadly and dirty physical activity, today's electronic battlefield means brawn is no longer sufficient. Brains matter more than ever and the modernizing PLA is going to great lengths to ensure its high tech weapons have brainy soldiers behind them.

Before its push for better educated recruits, the PLA consisted of men with middle school or high school degrees. This emphasis of brain over brawn is part of ongoing PLA reforms that are now more important as China finds itself in a two-front conflict facing the United States and Japan over the disputed South China Sea and East China Sea, and India that is reinforcing its forces arrayed along its 4,000 kilometer-long border with China.

The PLA's modernization has seen it build smart and long-range missiles; launched a growing number of modern warships and attempt to build fifth generation stealth jet fighters. Then there's the need for brainy soldiers for cyber warfare and electronic warfare.

China's Military Service Law required two-thirds of all new PLA recruits come from rural areas. These people only needed to have a ninth grade education to qualify. The remaining one-third had to be high school graduates coming from cities.

Under that same law rescinded in 2011, college students were exempt from the possibility of conscription. The result was a military largely without college-educated soldiers.

TagsPeople's Liberation Army, recruits, college graduates, Military Service Law