Dealing with unhappy military recruits--with Chinese characteristics

"Military service according to law
is every citizen's glorious duty"

This story on the CNN website sparked this contributor to do a bit of digging into the background and backstory of this Chinese recruit who wanted to back out of military service. The English language report can be found here.

The recruit's name is Zhang Fakang, a native of Danzhou, Hainan Province. Through a Google search, I discovered he is far from the only one.  See reports on punishments of:
a recruit from Gansu Province; another case from Hainan Province: a recruit from Hebei Province; 26 from Heilongjiang Province; and one from Guizhou Province.

There are media reports from many other provinces as well. What can we see from this report on Zhang is the following:

1. When he wanted to quit and his superiors were unsuccessful in persuading him to remain in the service, they sent a message to the local recruitment office asking them to send someone to change his thinking (市征兵办收到部队发函，请派人到部队协助做好张发康的思想转化工作). In other cases, parents have been drafted to persuade their sons.

2. When persuasion failed, the recruit was punished under the Military Service Law and Temporary Measures on Resolving the Issue of New Recruits Refusing Military Service (Temporary Measures, 解决新兵拒服兵役问题暂行办法）的通知》（军动〔2018〕238号), and related measures. The Temporary Measures do not appear to be publicly available but are cited in media accounts of new recruits refusing military service. 

3. From the account in the English language version of the People's Liberation Army Daily, it is clear that Zhang (and other recruits) are being punished through China's social credit system):

First, include him into the list of those who are seriously discreditable in fulfilling national defense obligations for life, and impose joint punishments on him. He will be banned from applying for going abroad, purchasing real estate, taking flights, long-distance trains or buses, or loans and insurance services for two years. 

Second, forbid him to be employed as civil servants, or in those jobs managed in accordance with the Civil Servant Law, nor to be recruited by government agencies and enterprises as temporary staff.

Third, indicate his information of "military service status" in the household registration information system as "rejection of military service."

Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center Senior Fellow, Jeremy Daum, has written extensively on China's social credit system--this is one of his recent articles.  Social credit system punishments are often done through multi-institution memoranda of understanding (MOU) (see this analysis of some of the legal issues in these memoranda), as is also true in the area of punishing new recruits who demand to leave military service.  This contributor is having trouble finding the MOU for Hainan but found an analogous one for another province. But it is likely that the principles are the same and many Communist Party, state, and other institutions are involved. 

Shaanxi Province MOU on joint punishments
in the area of military service

For historical parallels to Ming Dynasty China, see Harvard Professor Michael Szonyi's book: The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politicals in Late Imperial China.