My grandfather joined the Chinese army at the age of 17 when the democrats and communists were fighting for the country; he didn’t really have a choice to join or not, because in his generation a group of people wanted China to be democratic instead of communist; if the democratic side won the war, then there wouldn’t be a “People’s Republic of China” now or back then, so he was kind of forced to join the army so that he would have a China to live in and so China wouldn’t go bye bye.