The Shadow of Ukraine: Beijing Militarizes the Academia for "Total War"

Extrema Ratio: The PRC's National Defense Education Reform (2022-2024)

The Mandate of Qiushi

The directives for strengthening national defense education in Chinese universities, promoted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2022 and 2024 and disclosed through its influential official theoretical journal, Qiushi (求是), in a September 2025 article, signal a sharp strategic shift. Extrema Ratio sees this reform not as a simple curricular modernization but as an acceleration of Xi Jinping’s “holistic national security” strategy. The program's content clearly shows how the CCP is applying the tactical and ideological lessons learned from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to prepare the nation—particularly its future elite—for a potential large-scale military confrontation, focusing the country’s mind and resources on competition with the West.

by Nicola and Gabriele Iuvinale

Lessons from War and Ideological Control

The invasion of Ukraine provided Beijing with crucial strategic and operational insights that influenced the urgency and specific content of the reforms:

1. The Importance of "Combat Readiness": Russia's failure to achieve a swift victory highlighted that superiority in hardware alone is insufficient. The reform, which aims to enhance the "flavor of combat" and integrate advanced military theory and practice, seeks to correct operational deficiencies observed in Moscow's performance and prepare technologically advanced reserve forces.

2. Civilian Support and Loyalty to the Party (The "Red Gene"): The CCP aims to prevent potential internal disunity in the event of a crisis, such as over Taiwan, by integrating the "Red Gene" and strengthening patriotic education. This ensures absolute loyalty to the Party and the regime.

3. The Ideological Parallel (Russia-NATO): The broad emphasis on ideological preparedness and adopting a "comprehensive national security perspective" mirrors criticisms that circulated in Russia following the conflict's start. Some Russian observers lamented that the state failed to maintain a strong enough anti-NATO ideology among the post-Soviet population. In contrast, the CCP is intensifying ideological control from the universities upward, ensuring students view the West not merely as a strategic rival but as an existential threat to the security of the regime and its ideology.

Western Concerns and Dual-Use Academia

The CCP's drive to strengthen military education among university students confirms and amplifies Western concerns regarding information exchange and joint research with Chinese universities:

• "Dual-Use" Risk: Collaboration between Chinese academics and students and Western universities—particularly in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and quantum computing—is viewed as a conduit through which technology and intellectual property can be transferred and directly applied to the modernization goals of the PLA (People's Liberation Army).

• "Seven Sons of National Defense": Many Chinese institutions actively engaged in international research are known for their close ties to the Chinese military apparatus. The reform program, which explicitly strengthens links between universities, active military personnel, and local experts, is perceived as an attempt to further "militarize" the higher education system and recruit academic know-how to serve Party-State objectives in a more structured manner.

In conclusion, the Chinese military course reform is interpreted as a preventive and reactive move that leverages the lessons of the Ukraine conflict to indoctrinate, modernize, and militarize its future academic elite, ensuring that technological capabilities and ideological support are aligned with the CCP's geopolitical goals.