by PHILIP LENCZYCKI at dailycaller.com
The Chinese military is training kindergarteners to handle firearms and fight like soldiers in boot camps across China this summer, according to dozens of school social media accounts reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The boot camps feature combat training for boys and girls with a wide variety of toy weapons including knives, grenades, rifles and shoulder-fired missiles, and require the children to adopt military behavior, such as saluting, the schools’ social media posts show. The rise in the militarization of China’s youth appears to follow a 2019 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee push for increased “National Defense Education” and a related effort directing schools to hold National Defense Education activities in 2022, according to government documents.
“There’s sort of a ‘get ’em while they’re young’ mentality that has always been part of the communist ethos,” Brandon Weichert, a U.S. Air Force consultant, told the DCNF. “Xi Jinping is trying to inculcate not just a patriotic fervor among the next generation, but I think he’s trying to also create actual next soldiers for the inevitable campaigns that he plans on waging militarily.”
Uniformed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers oversaw all of the kindergarten boot camps that the DCNF reviewed. The boot camps were located in major Chinese cities, such as Beijing, Nanjing and Shenzhen, and were also run in more than half a dozen provinces including Anhui, Fujian and Guangdong, according to the schools’ social media posts.
The programs featured roughly the same sequence of activities, according to a DCNF review of posts from the participating kindergartens.
The boot camps generally began with basic military etiquette and proceeded to teach various military skills ranging from combat to emergency medical training. Additionally, a number of these programs also taught the children about famous PLA heroes and martyrs, according to the schools’ accounts.
‘Swear To Love The Motherland’
In May 2023, faculty members and more than 80 children of the Xingtan Guanghui Kindergarten in Guangdong province assembled on the playground for the opening ceremony of their school’s week-long National Defense Education camp, all wearing matching camouflage fatigues, according to the school’s social media account.
“INHERIT THE RED GENE, CARRY FORWARD PATRIOTIC FEELINGS, LOVE CHINA, LITTLE SOLDIER,” declared a large PLA banner, which partially hid the kindergarten’s playset.
“Kindergarten momma encourages her children not to fear hardship, fatigue or strict training,” the school’s principal told the children during the opening ceremony, the school’s social media account reported. “Respect the instructors and obey all commands.”
read more