The right connections will no longer protect students

As the People's Liberation Army has had some of the world's top weapons, it is also pursuing top talent and has begun to raise the threshold for professionals, PLA Daily reported.

In the past, it would be very complicated for a military academy to expel a student because regulations were loosely executed and the affected student would always find someone well-connected to lobby the school, the PLA's flagship newspaper said in a front page story on Monday.

But now the situation has begun to change, the report noted, citing examples from the PLA Second Artillery Engineering University in Xi'an, Shaanxi province.