Across several provinces this month, Chinese military units and local people’s armed forces staged a wave of national‑defence education activities aimed at primary and secondary school pupils. Soldiers and reservists acted as “red” guides, telling stories of model figures such as Lei Feng and local martyrs, organising chorus lessons and exhibitions of weapons and aerospace achievements, and integrating martial arts and ideological lessons into “opening‑term” classes. The exercises emphasised emotional, immersive pedagogy—singing, image displays, equipment viewing and first‑person narratives—to graft what organisers call the “red gene” and a sense of civic responsibility into young minds.
The events reported from sites including an Army 77 Group Army brigade, the Tonghua military subdistrict in Jilin, and people’s armed units in Shandong, Jiangsu and Jiangxi followed a similar playbook. Activities ranged from visits to Lei Feng themed photo exhibitions and advanced equipment displays to national‑defence civics classes, weapon‑model demonstrations and talks about aerospace heroes. In some places the programmes were explicitly framed as the “first lesson” of the school term, folding patriotic education into the very start of the academic year.
These local initiatives sit within a broader, long‑running emphasis in Beijing on patriotic and national‑security education. Over the past decade Chinese leaders have increasingly sought to tighten ideological alignment between state, party and society, and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has expanded outreach to civilians as part of a strategy to deepen civil‑military integration. School programmes that normalise the presence of soldiers and military equipment are a low‑cost way to build public acceptance of defence priorities and a reservoir of goodwill for policies that require public backing.
For domestic politics the payoff is straightforward. Immersive education campaigns help authorities cultivate a cohort of young people for whom service, national security and the legitimacy of state narratives are presented as moral imperatives. They also serve to humanise the armed forces in the eyes of families and communities, helping to ease recruitment and civil‑military cooperation at the local level. The emphasis on role models and ritual—singing, ceremonies, storytelling—reflects a pedagogical choice to bind emotion to civic duty rather than rely solely on detached instruction.
Internationally the programmes are less provocative than manoeuvres or armament announcements, but they matter for neighbouring states and observers because they are part of a longer trend: the normalization of military visibility in everyday Chinese life. For external audiences this signals a polity that is consolidating its domestic consensus about defence and deterrence—an important context for understanding how Beijing may mobilise public opinion in times of tension. At the same time, the materials and methods being used—especially equipment displays and championing of military heroes—underscore that the PLA views societal support as part of its force‑generation strategy.
There are limits and potential frictions. The line between patriotic education and militarisation of childhood can be politically sensitive, and local authorities must balance civic messaging with parental concerns and curricular priorities. Yet given institutional incentives and central guidance, the pattern is likely to persist and spread: patriotic “first lessons” are an efficient way to inculcate a civic disposition aligned with state security goals, and they dovetail with broader efforts to reshape national identity in the years ahead.