EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No. 2
Abstract
This paper examines how veterans of the People's Liberation Army were treated in their communities and workplaces after their demobilization in the 1950s and 1960s. It argues that evidence of widespread discrimination against veterans, who were lauded by the state for their heroism and sacrifice, challenges one of the more common "tropes" of contemporary Chinese politics--that patriotism and nationalism are rising among wide swathes of the population. Using new archival sources, the paper focuses on the challenges veterans faced in the post-war era, among them chronic pain, poverty, job discrimination, and marriage difficulties. as well as how they responded to them. To be sure, these problems were not unique to China; many veterans around the world experienced them. The paper concludes by exploring the cultural, political, and economic reasons why veterans in China appear to have fared particularly poorly when compared with many of their counterparts elsewhere in the world.
Author
Neil J. Diamant is Assistant Professor, specializing in East Asian politics with an emphasis on state-society relations, policy implementation and institutional analysis. He is author of Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1950-1968 (University of California Press, in press), which examines the implementation of laws liberalizing divorce in Chinese cities, suburbs and among ethnic minorities in frontier regions.
This paper was submitted to "EAI Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia" supported by the Henry Luce Foundation based in New York. All papers are available only through the online database.
The Chinese state, like many modern ones, has two calendars. The first, shaped by culture and history, is the more familiar one: all students in courses in East Asian Studies departments learn about Chinese New Year, the Moon and Dragon Boat Festivals, Qingming (Tomb-Sweeping) and others. The other, less familiar to foreigners, is the political calendar. Its features, however, are readily recognizable: a day celebrating a political founding (Oct. 1, 1949 in the PRC; Jan. 1, 1912 in Taiwan), critical junctures in history, or the contributions of various social groups to national development (for example, May 1st for labor, March 8 for women). Sometimes cultural and political holidays overlap—the ROC government notes that, during the Qingming festival, it’s “customary to visit the tombs of the martyrs or the revolution”—but usually the calendars remain separate, and change little or only incrementally, usually accompanied by controversy. Governments, like leaders of organized religion, understand the need to maintain ritual and routine to sustain legitimacy, and attempt to create rituals that speak to the heart of their citizens.
1 Despite the plethora of political events and the variety of groups they commemorate, two days are conspicuously missing from the PRC’s political calendar: a “Veterans Day” and “Memorial Day.” Despite the fact that the CCP emerged victorious from its decades-long rivalry with the Nationalist Party, awarded veterans high class status (they belonged to the “red” category), claims victory in the war against Japan and the United States in the Sino-Japanese and Korean Wars respectively, defeated the Indian Army in the border wars of the early 1960s, there is not a single holiday devoted to the people responsible for these accomplishments. Nor has current-day bellicosity among “nationalists” (who threaten to use military force against Taiwan and the US should Taiwan declare independence) translated into a commemorative holiday for veterans, even as they were called the “flesh and blood” of the revolution.
2 Years of veteran political activism, which include uprisings, strikes, slow-downs, sit-ins and petitioning Beijing, has not resulted in their “elevation” to holiday status (unlike women and children, who both have their days).
3 On the contrary: groups of organized veterans are swatted away much like any other group that “threatens social stability.” In April 2005, just to give one recent example, 1,000-2,000 veterans (including divisional commanders), many wearing their old uniforms, gathered in front of the General Political Department of the PLA to protest their treatment after their discharge, 4 and on August 1 2005 (Army Day), hundreds of veterans protested in Beijing but were quickly dragged away by the police. The missing commemorative day for PRC veterans is somewhat of an anomaly when considering the comparative record of modern states that have fought large scale wars in the 20th century.
5 The United States, which has lost far fewer soldiers than the PRC, has a Veterans Day and a Memorial Day; the Mall in Washington has public memorials for three wars, including one that was lost. Israel’s Memorial Day comes the day before Independence Day, cementing the link between sacrifice and nation-building. In the post WWII period in the Soviet Union, perhaps the country most comparable to China in terms of its political system, veterans managed to “carve[d] their own space” within the “highly styled parameters of the Soviet polity.” There, veterans came to dominate the post-war scene politically and culturally: war novels, memoirs, and parades and honors galore were bestowed upon the victors in the “Great Patriotic War.” There was no status higher than a decorated and wounded combat veteran; those not serving in combat were marginalized in the Communist Party.
6 In this paper I suggest that China’s missing days are not happenstance: they speak to the highly problematic position veterans occupy in the Chinese state and society. I will also suggest that a deeper understanding of veterans’ experiences places us in a unique vantage point to reassess many of the key components of Chinese patriotism after the 1949 revolution. Let’s think about it: Why would officials and citizens of a country that asserts its patriotic pride by pointing to the positive outcome of military successes (such as a strong state that can no longer be “bullied”) discriminate against or ignore the veterans who fought those wars, to the point where veteran suicides prompted numerous state investigations? What does it say about the nature of patriotism when urban youth who protest against Japanese textbooks and casually assert a military response to Taiwanese independence, pay no heed to their own veterans’ predicament, or when the only Letter to the Editor concerning veterans that was written by a student in People’s Daily between 1949-1978 registers complaints about them? What does it say about the Chinese state when those who sacrificed so much for it—one of the 2005 protesters was the son of a Korean War veteran who was denied medical insurance and petitioned the state for a decade—are carted off by the police and have their leaders arrested? These events (from the 1950s, 1990s and after the turn of the century) surely complicate the notion of Chinese patriotism as an ascending ideological force legitimating the regime, as well as a “bonding force” between people. They demand that we revisit a question that preoccupied state-builders from Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei, Sun Yatsen and Mao Zedong: do Chinese citizens appreciate martial qualities? Most citizens do not join the military, but are they willing to give a “fair shake,” in the sense of fair and equitable treatment, to those who are rhetorically and legislatively praised (in the form of beneficial policies) for having risked their lives and devoted time, resources, and families for the sake of the nation?7 While the narrative of “ascendant patriotism” would suggest an answer in the affirmative, the evidence suggests a far more complicated picture...(Continued)