The People's Liberation Army (PLA) plans to recruit more well-educated young people and pledges to increase servicemen's income, according to a draft amendment to the country's military recruitment law.

More than 300 freshman-year female students from 80 colleges in Beijing wait for physical checkups for army conscription on Dec 5, 2010. [Li Jihui / for China Daily]

Recruitment for full-time active duty faces three major problems - lack of new recruits who have received higher education, inadequacy of laws that guarantee remuneration of servicemen and an outdated mechanism for finding employment for veterans who leave the service - according to Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of general staff of the PLA.

The amendment, which is up for review at the 11th National People's Congress Standing Committee, removes an article saying full-time students can postpone their service in the army.

It also raises the maximum age for recruitment of college graduates to 24, stating that college graduate recruits with outstanding performance in the army may be directly promoted to officer posts.

College students enlisted for active service may resume their studies within two years of leaving the armed forces, according to the amendment.

The date for recruitment registration is also expected to be shifted from the current Sept 30 to June 30 in order to facilitate those who want to join the army before they go to university or after their graduation.

By the end of 2009, there were 130,000 college graduates in the PLA.

The clause in the Military Service Law stipulating that local governments should arrange employment for veterans who reside in urban areas "cannot suit the actual situation of the personnel system and imposes a heavy burden for the government", Sun said.

Currently, local authorities have to find jobs for more than 300,000 veterans each year, according to statistics provided by the top legislature.

To address the issue, the amendment suggests that governments can grant a pension to veterans whose service is less than 12 years.

It also pledges to increase the attractiveness of being a serviceman, proposing that salaries should be adjusted in sync with economic growth and the government should introduce military insurance.

"A considerable part of the country's current conscription mechanism has become out of date," Chi Fubin, a professor at the Nanjing Army Command College, was quoted by Southern Metropolis Daily as saying. "The amendment is badly needed."

"If the treatment package for servicemen becomes better than at present and the benefits for the veteran can be fully guaranteed, I will consider temporarily ceasing my studies and joining the army," a student at Beijing-based Capital University of Economics and Business, who only gave his surname of Zhang, told China Daily on Monday.