[FireDragon76]

Originally Posted by vienna

Both Russia and China have long had active conscription (draft) laws/programs, so it would seem unlikely they would have wide scale recruitment efforts; that said, the US did heavily advertise for recruits during the period in which it had an active draft, a effort to mainly enlist members who would sign on for periods longer than the standard two (2) year term of service under the draft, with the enlistees' term being anywhere for four (4) to six (6) years or so, depending on the actual terms of enlistment; it should also be noted the US draft covered only conscription into the US Army and not the other services (USN, USAF, Marines, etc.), so enlistment efforts were needed to fill the ranks of those services; if there are wide scale enlistment efforts in CHN/RUS, it could be a similar situation where certain services are not covered by their conscription laws/programs; interestingly, during the Vietnam War years, the US Marine Corps, was hard pressed to meet its recruitment quotas and sometimes poached draftees sworn in by the US Army to fill quotas; I know personally of at least two former US Army draftees, in two separate cities at two different times during the Vietnam War, who related how, after they had been officially sworn in at the induction center, had Marine representatives walk into the the induction ceremonies, and selectively pick draftees out of the ranks and inform them they were now officially Marines...




<O>

It's my understanding that in China and Russia, something similar is happening as what you describe during the time of the American draft. Only a portion of the armed forces of Russia are conscripts. Also, Russia's experience with conscription hasn't been uniformly positive, with some naval disasters having poorly trained conscripts contributing to them.