Everyone lies to their recruits.
If they did not lie to them, how could they get them to do stupid shit ?
When I joined it was the tail end of the cold war.
There was a picture/poster of a spetsnaz soldier doing an obstacle course in full battle gear, jumping over a wall in a gas mask.
Anyway story was if the russians can do it, so can we. Anyone who has worn a gas mask knows the difficulty of breathing, claustrophobia, etc.
Luckily they stopped doing a lot of the training when i had joined. But early we would do 3 day exercises wearing gas masks etc.
The justification was the spetsnaz soldier pic. Later on it came out the pic was a fake. And probably the higher ups knew it.
Or when you have shoddy equipment, the higher ups say it is perfectly safe.
Chinese just need to get their propaganda machine going a little better.
This poster with the "great leader" with the mythical battle ships behind just does not cut it anymore.
Don't worry in 5-10 years the chinese will be able to make american quality propaganda, at chinese prices.
Then the americans will outsource all of thier propaganda to china
