China picks its lowest-scoring officers to command nuclear submarines [Video]

The job of commanding a nuclear submarine should go to smart and well-qualified officers. Or at least that’s the case in Western navies.

Not so in the Chinese navy. Chinese submarine officers — except for engineers — tend to come from candidates with the lowest college entrance test scores, according to a US analyst. This suggests that People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) sub commanders are not the best and the brightest officers most poised to cope with the stresses and challenges endemic to submarine warfare.

“Based on Gaokao national college entrance exam scoring information for PLA [People’s Liberation Army] academic institutions, the PLAN Engineering University on average ranks number two on test scores across PLA academic institutions,” according to a paperwritten by Roderick Lee, an expert on the Chinese military, for the China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College. “Meanwhile, the Submarine Academy consistently ranks among the bottom three of …