As the Lunar New Year approached, primary schools across China used video links, synchronized flag‑raisings and letter exchanges to bring frontline border guards into classrooms hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. Local veterans' affairs bureaux and people's armed forces departments coordinated the interactions — part ceremonial, part civic education — to deliver festive greetings and first‑hand stories of life on the frontier.
In Anyang, Henan, pupils at Sanguanmiao Primary School joined members of the PLA 69310 unit in a simultaneous flag‑raising, recited tributes to border heroes and listened as soldiers recounted patrols and daily duties. In Weihai, Shandong, a tower‑school connected to a Xinjiang border company and heard a conscript describe fetching water above 5,000 metres; the on‑screen testimony left children describing the notion of “duty” as immediate rather than abstract. In Yongzhou, Hunan, students promised on camera to study hard and “one day safeguard the country,” while local human‑military liaison offices vowed to sustain the cloud‑based programme beyond the holiday.
The activities follow a broader push by state agencies to embed national‑defence awareness into youth education through experiential and emotive means. Using cloud technology and coordinated public ceremonial acts allows authorities to combine human interest — soldiers’ personal hardships and the warmth of New Year wishes — with a civic message about sovereignty, sacrifice and the role of armed forces in daily life.
For domestic audiences the campaign performs several functions at once: it rallies public sympathy for troops who remain on duty during family festivals, it normalizes military presence in civic life, and it subtly primes students for future service or public support for defence policies. Internationally, the events are less about signalling imminent military action than about demonstrating the state’s ability to maintain social cohesion around border security themes and to cultivate broad sympathy for frontier posts from the heartlands.
The method also reflects practical trends: affordable video technology narrows the sensory gap between coastal and alpine or desert border outposts and China’s classrooms, making defence education immersive rather than merely didactic. Officials and military spokespeople have in recent years emphasised ‘‘civil‑military integration’’ and national security literacy in school curricula; these cloud‑link events are a low‑cost, high‑visibility instantiation of that policy.
There is a plainly human element to the exchanges. The stories of cold, isolation and routine vigilance resonate with children and give the state’s message emotional texture. Whether the programmes become a decisive factor in recruiting or long‑term attitudinal change is uncertain, but they are a clear example of how Beijing is using ritual, technology and education to shape the next generation’s relationship to the armed forces.