Hoovers the reported twenty percent youth unemployment problem at risk of causing societal instability, perhaps, and create large talent pool for wagner/blackwater style international private security secondary market.
Yes, there's absolutely no downside to taking already disaffected, unemployed young men who can't find a wife, giving them weapons training, and then sending them off to a meat grinder somewhere from which they—well, some of them—will return even more angry and messed up than they were before.
If I were China, I definitely would not be worrying about the social impact this sort of thing could have at all.
This is targetting technical post college cohort to man sophisticated modern weapon systems - aka very employable folks not covered under 18-24 youth unemployment stats. They're not looking for more jar heads to run private security, which is already filled with able bodies. They're looking for cyber/electronic warfare specialists etc, folks US mil has problems retaining or competing with private industry.
Really depends on how you define meaning, personally. If you're not particularly nationalist (not a hard sentiment to imagine in China), anything probably beats conscription for a cause you don't really care about.
