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New students arrive
for their military raining:
a
patchwork of green
squares drilling on the sports field. Two things strike me:
the fact they are singing old revolutionary songs and also that the
PLA sergeant doesn’t know the words, and is reading from a book.
But then I remember that the
PLA (People's
Liberation Army) is one of the biggest businesses in
China and how the
Communist Party created this situation back in the early 80s to
ensure the loyalty of the
PLA
to the process of reform, and how during a crack down on brothels in
Shanghai, they found most of them owned by the PLA, who obviously
have no shortage of bouncers upon whom to call
seeing fat officers with their
bundles of accounts and thinking 'businessman' not 'soldier' is a
strange practice. But, seeing the figures for Chinese
investment in the US, maybe the PLA have already conquered
Later in the day,
as I listen to the students all shouting in chorus – a sound all day
that echoes throughout the college – I wonder how some of the older
people think when they hear the sound of young Chinese chanting
slogans. And whether it disturbs their sleep
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