Protesters sure are a pain. Unless you’re the Chinese Communist Party. Then protesters are easily dealt with. Except of course when the protesters are military veterans.
Yes, over 1,000 People’s Liberation Army veterans lined up outside the Chinese Ministry of National Defense in Beijing—and were quickly surrounded by police and buses so no one had to see. And believe me folks, when protesting in the capital of one of the most repressive regimes on Earth, nothing beats a Pepsi!
Eventually they were all bused away. And any mention of the protest on Chinese social media was censored.
According to an activist interviewed by AP, “veterans have staged more than 50 protests this year alone.”
And this is a problem for the Chinese Communist Party. Because it’s in some ways harder to crack down on veterans than other groups. Yes, veterans can be better organized and they come equipped with a nationwide network of comrades-in-arms. But there’s also the political risk. The Communist Party may have been able to convince the nation that Falun Gong, a peaceful meditation practice with zero political aspirations, was a dangerous group out to destroy China. It’s a little trickier to do that with your own troops
So why are veterans protesting so much in China? I mean, don’t soldiers in China have to swear an oath to “follow the leadership of the Communist Party of China?” Well, here’s one reason...
Last September, the Chinese Communist Party held a huge military parade, to celebrate how they defeated the Japanese in World War II. They did not. That was a lie. But during the parade, soldiers got to line up in rank and file, new shiny missiles were shown off, and tanks rolled down the streets of Beijing, and no students got crushed!
But troops may have realized something was amiss when Chinese Leader Xi Jinping gave his speech at the war parade, and mentioned “peace” 17 times. Because what he was trying to tell the troops was, “you’re fired.”
I mean, why do you need so many troops when China will “advance the noble cause of global peace and development,” “We Chinese love peace,” and “In the interest of peace, China will remain committed to peaceful development?” And that was all in like two paragraphs.
Xi Jinping wasn’t out to give peace of mind. He was out to give a piece of his mind—with massive layoffs. At the parade, Xi announced 300,000 military layoffs, an entire 13% of troops, to be completed by the end of 2017. Those are the biggest layoffs to hit the Chinese military since 1997, when half a million soldiers were fired. Or as the Party calls it, “demobilized.”
But the real reason for the layoffs is not that the Communist Party is peace-loving, but rather, China’s military has grown up. Literally actually, soldiers can’t fit into the old tanks.
But you see, in the good old days, you could fight a war by just throwing wave after wave of your own men at the enemy. Mao even famously said,
And now that the population has doubled... It’s the Zap Brannigan strategy.
But current Chinese leader Xi Jinping wants to modernize the military, by spending less on people, and more on high tech weaponry, particularly for the air force and navy. Plus now they want people who have college educations. And that’s bad news for the older Chinese soldiers, many of whom only went to middle school or high school. That makes them more likely to be “demobilized” into retirement.
There are about 6 million People’s Liberation Army veterans on welfare. But China is one of the few major countries that has no centralized government department or civic group handling veterans affairs. So it falls to cash-strapped local governments to give veterans pensions, healthcare, guaranteed jobs--all the things the Party promised them. Could this possibly lead to abuse and corruption?
“We’ve gotten nothing since retiring from service: no pensions, no social security.” That’s according to one of the protesters interviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
Apparently it’s also common for local officials to pocket a portion of veterans’ stipends, which ranks somewhere in between taking candy from a baby and stealing old ladies’ purses.
Thirty years ago, Chinese veterans would just be given jobs in state-run enterprises. But a lot of those have shut down. And now with a slowing economy, and a tightening job market, things aren’t looking good for China’s veterans.
As one of last week’s protesters told AP, some veterans living in the countryside are provided with as little as $60 a month. Which, if you’ve seen my recent episode, you know that’s barely enough to live about above the abject poverty line of a dollar ninety per day.
Although last week’s protest got a lot of attention, this isn’t a new issue. In fact, the Chinese military has been analyzing veterans protests since at least 1991. And according to NPR, in 2010, Party officials listed “dissatisfied veterans” as one of the three emerging threats to political stability. That might be why state-run media have been emphasizing over the last few months that the Party will definitely find jobs for demobilized soldiers.
So how has the regime responded to these latest protests from veterans? By warning of “hostile forces” trying to take advantage of the situation. I can’t take all the credit, of course. Because really, if there’s any hostile force out to get veterans, it would have to be the Chinese Communist Party. Because “Veterans say those who protest, petition and sue the government are often detained or kept under surveillance.”
And according to Radio Free Asia, that’s just what happened to some of the protesters who went to Beijing last week. They were brought back to their home provinces, then questioned in temporary detention centers about who organized the protests.
But hey, the Chinese regime is working hard. And not just by arresting veterans and blaming hostile forces. They also sent an infuriatingly dismissive letter to Reuters saying they really do care about veterans. The Defense Ministry wrote that the Party “care[s] about veterans and pay[s] high attention to resolving their problems,” and, “the temporary living difficulties of some veterans will be resolved.”
But considering how they handle most dissidents in China, let’s just hope they don’t find a permanent solution to those temporary living difficulties.
So what do you think of how the Chinese Communist Party treats its veterans? Leave your comments below.
