- quoted from 'Warlord Politics in China: 1916-1928' by Hsi-Sheng ChiJames Yen's investigation of Fengtien troops during the 1920's showed that only 25 out of every 150 soldiers (16.6 percent) were literate; T'ao Meng-ho's investigation of a northern brigade showed that only 13 percent of the soldiers were literate. Worse conditions probably existed in other troops. For instance, Feng Yu-hsiang declared that during 1919-20, over 95 percent of the officers and men in his army were illiterate or semiliterate.
I know that a lot of Manchukuo's first soldiers were simply recruited from former Chinese army units in Manchuria, so I was wondering if there are any statistics on what the literacy rates were among Manchukuo soldiers during the 1930s-40s? Did the Manchukuo military bring in literacy classes as part of their training of Chinese soldiers (especially the officers) to try and improve their quality?