Veterans’ Political Activism in China (original) (raw)
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Contentious Veterans: China's Retired Officers Speak Out
What drives retired military officers in China toward contention? Decades of research on protest has produced little on veterans' collection action, and even less on that by ex-officers. Newspaper reports, police journals, and veterans' blogs show that contention by Chinese former officers (ranging from occupying government compounds to marches, mass petitioning, open letters, and class action lawsuits) is the result of bad luck in post-military job assignments, a fragmented political system that makes it difficult to ensure that pensions and other benefits reach retirees, and pervasive corruption that leads ex-officers to feel that local officials have embezzled funds meant for them. Contention by former officers typically uses military rhetoric and builds on military experiences, even for former officers who were employed in civilian jobs for many years. Although contention by ex-officers is not likely to rock the state, it says much about how ''sticky'' military identities are, where veterans fit in the political landscape, Leninist civil-military relations, and the treatment that old soldiers receive in a fast changing socioeconomic order.
Based on in-depth interviews of Chinese veterans and specifically focusing on the cadets in Shanghai, this article explores the mechanism of emotional mobilization of this highly organized contentious group vis-à-vis other disorganized and dispersive one such as labors and homeowners. It reveals that strong emotional ties with comrades in troops and the despondency brought about by the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) ineffective redress to their demands have rendered Chinese veterans, who see themselves rhetorically glorified and embodying heroic status in the country, protesting for their military identity and military rank recovery for decades. In order to defuse veterans' grievances, flexible governance, which stresses emotional care and affection by petition social workers, is deployed by the Party-state to settle disputes that beyond law and policy.
Journal of Contemporary China, 2020
Based on in-depth interviews of Chinese veterans and specifically focusing on the cadets in Shanghai, this article explores the mechanism of emotional mobilization of this highly organized contentious group vis-à-vis other disorganized and dispersive one such as labors and homeowners. It reveals that strong emotional ties with comrades in troops and the despondency brought about by the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) ineffective redress to their demands have rendered Chinese veterans, who see themselves rhetorically glorified and embodying heroic status in the country, protesting for their military identity and military rank recovery for decades. In order to defuse veterans' grievances, flexible governance, which stresses emotional care and affection by petition social workers, is deployed by the Party-state to settle disputes that beyond law and policy.
Recent research on collective memory and war commemoration highlights the “conspicuous silence” of war veterans in Chinese history. Studies of the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945) typically reflect either a state-centred approach, which emphasises the official history constructed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or the alternative narratives constructed by intellectual elites in post-socialist China. In response to these top-down narratives, this essay focuses instead on a historical redress movement led by ex-servicemen of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The former PLA members, the participant volunteers of this movement, devote themselves into seeking and supporting a group of forgotten Kuomintang (KMT) veterans who fought against the Japanese invaders in the Second World War but now struggle with impoverished living conditions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from 2013 to 2015, I will show how the daily interactions between these two groups of veterans embody a more private and internalized sense of commemorative yearning for a lost past, highlighting in the process the value of ethnographic research in breaking through the wall of silence constructed by hegemonic histories around veteran communities and their role in making war history.
Armed Forces & Society, 2014
What drives retired military officers in China toward contention? Decades of research on protest has produced little on veterans' collection action, and even less on that by ex-officers. Newspaper reports, police journals, and veterans' blogs show that contention by Chinese former officers (ranging from occupying government compounds to marches, mass petitioning, open letters, and class action lawsuits) is the result of bad luck in post-military job assignments, a fragmented political system that makes it difficult to ensure that pensions and other benefits reach retirees, and pervasive corruption that leads ex-officers to feel that local officials have embezzled funds meant for them. Contention by former officers typically uses military rhetoric and builds on military experiences, even for former officers who were employed in civilian jobs for many years. Although contention by ex-officers is not likely to rock the state, it says much about how ''sticky'' military identities are, where veterans fit in the political landscape, Leninist civil-military relations, and the treatment that old soldiers receive in a fast changing socioeconomic order.
The long-term biographical consequences of political activism raises two questions: What remains of the political passions after social movements subside and why does this occur? Scholars have pointed to the transformative power of participation in social movements. Some participants may experience a transformation in values and beliefs, while others have formed enduring social networks and sustained social activism
Introduction: state, society, and the individual in wartime China during the 1930s and 1940s
Journal of Modern Chinese History, 2017
In the 140 years following the mid-nineteenth century, China was frequently caught up in wars whose causes and scales varied. In their frequency, duration, and scale, and in the large number of people whose lives they impacted, these wars constituted a determining factor in modern Chinese history. Over these years, China was transformed from an empire to a nation-state, and arguably, this transformation was in important ways carried out during or even through wars. Many key factors in contemporary China's ideological constitution, administrative and military systems, social structure, collective memory, cultural values, and even aesthetic choices originated in wartime experiences or were even enabled by wars. As is the case in many other countries, including those in East Asia, most of the external and internal conflicts China faces today are rooted in the military conflicts that took place during this century and a half. It is important for historians to identify moments of structural changesthe turning points in history. These wars very often constituted just such turning points for the modern world. If we fail to recognize the impacts of these wars, we will miss a fundamental force that contributed to the shaping of modern Chinese history. This special issue is the product of two conferences, collaboratively organized by the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the China Studies Program at the University of Washington, that were held in Beijing in 2015 and in Seattle in 2016. At the first meeting, the participants introduced their projects and shared their primary sources; at the second meeting a year later, they read and commented on one another's completed papers. Although the original plan was to include projects on all wars in the twentieth century, the majority of the papers turned out to be on World War II in China, that is, the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (War of Resistance), so that became the focus of this special issue. The conferences coincided with China's celebration of the "70th Anniversary of the Victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War," and a large number of commemorative events were held across the country. These primarily highlighted the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the war. While it is important to study the War of Resistance as a political and military event, the group of scholars whose works are included in this special issue focus instead on local expressions of national politics and on individual experiences of the history shaped by impersonal forcesin other words, on how the war was lived.
Solidarity Stalled: When Chinese Activists Meet Social Movements in Democracies
Critical Sociology, 2020
This study analyzes a largely unexamined phenomenon in the studies of transnational activism: immigrant activists’ engagement in progressive social movements in their residence countries. Through participatory observation and interviews with the Chinese activist communities, this study explores how diaspora activists assess social movements in established liberal democracies in light of their experiences with organizing in a more repressive setting back home. Despite active involvement in social movements in their residence societies, these Chinese diaspora activists find the dominant models of activism in democracies to be overly institutionalized, lacking a sense of political urgency to push for real social change. The deeper and more intersectional understandings of social movements in democracies trigger positive reflections that help create new political subjectivities, but at the same time, they produce skepticism and disenchantment, lowering activists’ expectations about the ...
The affect of veteran activism
Critical Military Studies, 2017
This paper examines the affects of veteran activism, primarily that of those who are doing work tied to ideals of social justice, and shows that this activism is a process of demilitarization. It asks why these veterans are doing what they are doing and how they are doing it. The answers to these questions come from 22 interviews conducted with veteran activists all around the United States. Throughout these interviews three major themes tied to this demilitarization became prevalent: (1) a part of the veterans’ activism is tied to the community and camaraderie of other veterans with similar ideals and perspectives. This process works to form communities of awareness to the processes of militarization; (2) many veterans see their activism not only as a continuation of military service to the nation, but as inspired by their service, which in turn causes a demilitarizing reinscription of patriotism. This service is primarily done through social justice work that is seen as needed for the betterment of the nation that creates a critical narrative of western liberal democracy and US policy; and (3) their activism has become a form of healing, for themselves and for those affected by the violence of war, which becomes a demilitarization of the self.