The People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) is finding a hard time recruiting pilots because of the widespread presence of myopia, or near-sightedness, among many of the Chinese youth. Near-sightedness causes distant objects to be blurry while close objects appear normal.
It cited a study involving some 4,700 primary and junior middle school students in the city of Guangzhou in southern China, which revealed that 12 percent of students from Grade One in primary schools were suffering from myopia. More shockingly, this percentage jumps to a staggering to 67 percent among students of Grade One in junior middle schools.
China now ranks first in terms of myopia among teenagers, worse than even the rates in the United States and Japan despite teenagers in both countries having been exposed to electronic devices for a far longer period.
In an op-ed about this issue, Senior Colonel Dai Xu, a professor at the PLA National Defense University, said he and a colleague in charge of PLAAF pilot recruitment visited a senior middle school in South China three years ago to study the vision problems of students.
Their joint investigation found that only 8 to 10 students in a class of 40 students didn't wear eyeglasses. The rate of myopia was an astounding 80 percent. That rate might be higher since some students without glasses might be wearing contact lenses.
Extrapolating further, the duo concluded that in a senior middle school with almost 10,000 students, it was difficult to select a student that could qualify to be trained to become a pilot in the PLAAF.
"I was shocked," said Col. Xu. "Was this the real condition of our military talent reserves supporting our modern and powerful Air Force? Based on later investigations, I found that this was a universal result. Undoubtedly, a high rate of myopia has already greatly influenced national defense security."
He noted that some schools in China, including military academies, don't include myopia in their standard physical ability tests, "and this reflects general indifference to the problem of myopia in the whole society."
Col. Xu pointed out that it's now rare to conduct modern warfare only by virtue of physical strength in field operations. But the PLAAF especially has extremely strict requirements for vision. He also laments that China's level of human resources for PLA soldiers lies in the mid-range due to the high rate of myopia.
"Insufficient outdoor activity" is the reason for a sharp increase in the rate of myopia among children, and this fact has been recognized in China and overseas, said Col. Xu. On the other hand, some research institutions attribute the rise in myopia to the popularization of electronic devices.
"The high rate of myopia among Chinese students is a reflection not only on the problem of talent reserves for our PLA Air Force's pilots but also on the overall health of Chinese teenagers<' believes Col. Xu.
