In mid-January 2020, China’s military changed its conscription recruitment process from once a year to twice annually. Now, new members will join the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) via recruitment deadlines on March 1 and September 1 each year. Collin Koh, a research fellow at the Maritime Security Programme at RSIS, said, “Regarding (this) recent change… I believe they wanted to ensure a seamless transition between the inflow of new recruits and demobilisation of active service personnel, thus creating no gaps that would mean some operational units could be facing manpower shortfalls for certain periods of time. This challenge, of course, affects training tempo, and also affects unit cohesion.”