On weekend mornings in a hamlet beneath the Himalaya’s northern slopes, uniformed soldiers set aside rifles and maps for textbooks and lesson plans. A border unit of the People’s Liberation Army has for years been visiting Qionglin, a remote village in Milin county’s Nanyi Luoba ethnic township, to provide one-on-one after-school tutoring, run civic and national-defence classes, and refurbish school facilities.
The scheme began in 2021 when a border regiment paired with the local primary school as part of a wider military–civil co-operation drive. Commanders decided early on that improving infrastructure mattered, but so did cultural and educational uplift: with many parents working away and local adults limited by lower educational attainment, soldiers were asked to become “half-family teachers” for children who otherwise lacked after-class support.
The impact, by local accounts, has been tangible. Young soldiers who are themselves college-educated have been assigned households and pupils, visiting on weekends to tutor maths, reading and study skills; school leaders report improvements in discipline, classroom performance and pupil attendance, and several students from the township have since entered mainland Tibetan study programs.
The regiment has institutionalised the effort: idle rooms in the school are now a national-defence education space, routine lectures mark national holidays and school terms, and monitoring systems track tutoring records and student progress. The school was nominated in 2023 as a national model for defence education, a recognition that underscores the emphasis on patriotic socialisation as part of civic schooling in frontier areas.
For villagers the benefits extend beyond exam scores. Families say soldiers help with household chores and infrastructure maintenance, and children treat their “soldier teachers” as role models who inspire civic duty and a positive view of the military. Local officials describe weekly flag-raising ceremonies and spontaneous salutes as signs that pro-military sentiment and respect for state institutions are taking deeper root among the youngest generation.
Viewed from Beijing, this mix of educational aid and local engagement dovetails with longstanding Party goals for border governance: improve livelihoods, close social-service gaps, and strengthen integration between state institutions and ethnic minority communities. Programs that combine practical assistance with patriotic education can be presented as low-cost, high-yield instruments for stability in sensitive frontier zones.
Yet the model also carries political significance beyond classroom gains. Embedding soldiers in everyday community life accelerates the spread of official narratives, builds trust in uniformed personnel, and normalises military presence as a component of social service delivery—an approach that is efficient for state consolidation but also raises questions about the balance between welfare provision and political socialisation in minority regions.
As the unit prepares to keep its tutoring rounds going, commanders say they intend to stabilise pairing relationships over time so that children and families retain continuity even as soldiers rotate. If replicated elsewhere, the scheme offers a blueprint for how the PLA can simultaneously meet community needs and reinforce central-state ties across China’s frontier landscapes.