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Veterans, Organization, and the Politics of Martial Citizenship in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Abstract

This article examines the organizational origins of political vulnerability among Chinese military veterans between 1949 and 2006. Recently declassified sources from urban and rural archives show that many veterans, even as they were officially considered core members of the ruling elite and hailed as the “flesh and blood of the revolution,” nevertheless experienced frequent humiliation and discrimination; few citizens sympathized with their plight. The argument here is that much of this mistreatment can be traced to the failure of the state to provide veterans with the opportunity to organize in the context of either fraternal organizations or quasi-autonomous federations. In this respect, their predicament is notably different from their counterparts in democratic, fascist, or corporatist systems, or in other Leninist regimes. Why have veterans in Taiwan, Vietnam, and the former Soviet Union been allowed to form veterans organizations but veterans in the PRC—to their misfortune—have not? This article explains this anomaly.

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Copyright © East Asia Institute 

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References

Notes

I am very grateful to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board for generous funding for this project. I also would like to thank the EAI Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, for generous support for travel and research. I am also grateful to Stephen Haggard for his patience and editorial advice, as well as to the JEAS anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions.Google Scholar

Abbreviations used in the notes: DDA (Dongcheng District Archive; QA (Qingpu Archive); SMA (Shanghai Municipal Archive); SPA (Shandong Provincial Archive).Google Scholar

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130. Archival evidence from the Korean War describes this confusion. See SMA C1-2-362, p. 29; SMA A22-2-45, p. 149; SMA A22-2-45, p. 98.Google Scholar

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132. This image can be found in Gries, Peter, China's New Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. 59.Google Scholar

133. For the rise of technocrats, see Li, Cheng, China's Leaders: The New Generation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).Google Scholar

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137. Ibid., p. 173 (based on Gangkou kuaixun, May 1981). Southern China was also not immune from veteran discontent. According to reports from Hong Kong, close to a thousand veterans, calling themselves the “Grieving Heart Army,” attacked the Wuchuan County CCP headquarters after its leaders refused to meet with them after they returned from Vietnam and failed to secure jobs that had been promised to them by local officials.Google Scholar

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140. Bernstein, Thomas P. and Xiaobo, , Taxation with Representation in Contemporary Rural China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 148. Jianrong, Yu of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reports similar findings. See, for instance, “Organized Struggles of the Peasants and Political Risks Involved: An Investigation in County H of Hunan Province,” Zhanlue yu guanli, May 1, 2003, pp. 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

141. Interview, June 4, 2007, Shanghai. The legislator's name was withheld at his request.Google Scholar

142. See, for instance, Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); Kasza, Gregory, One World of Welfare: Japan in Comparative Perspective (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

143. See, especially, Gries, , China's New Nationalism; and “Balancing Act: A Survey of China,” The Economist , March 25, 2006.Google Scholar

144. Yung-fa, Chen, Making Revolution , p. 11 (emphasis added).Google Scholar