The PLA shrinks and veterans cause problems
Another aspect of the tension between the national government and local governments in China is illustrated by this article from the 10 November issue of The Economist.What's a local official to do when the national government makes promises and orders him to fulfill them?
This also illustrates another potential source of unrest in the Chinese countryside.
Beware of demob
"IT IS the army's recruitment season in Yantai, a port in Shandong province in northern China. A poster in one fishing village calls on citizens to report any attempt to secure one of the coveted vacancies by paying bribes or forging papers. But the Yantai authorities are far more worried about what happens when servicemen are discharged...
"Over the past couple of years protests by demobilised soldiers have become a potent challenge to local governments trying to keep the lid on unrest during a period of wrenching social and economic change...
"The ex-servicemen's main grievance is the difficulty of settling back into civilian life. Most soldiers from towns are assigned jobs in the civilian sector when they leave the army. But this has become increasingly difficult because of the dismantling of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in recent years and the resentment of surviving SOEs at having ex-soldiers foisted on them. Rural soldiers—the bulk of the non-officer ranks—are being sent back to villages where there is next to nothing to do...
"China is no stranger to protests. Thousands occur every year involving disparate groups of people: peasants enraged at being turfed off their land by local governments; city-dwellers whose houses are being bulldozed to make way for development; migrant workers complaining about not being paid; and workers laid off from SOEs. But these demonstrations are usually poorly organised, ill co-ordinated and easily contained by local governments...
"Party leaders have called on local governments to give priority to keeping veterans happy. But this is not easy. In addition to the regular turnover, hundreds of thousands have been demobilised in recent years as a result of efforts to trim the military's enormous size...
"Hu Xingdou, of the Beijing Institute of Technology, says peasant-soldiers are the government's biggest headache. Taught idealism in the army, he says, they go back to no work and a countryside rife with corruption. Former soldiers, he says, are often at the forefront of peasant unrest. Let the party beware."
Labels: China, economics, political culture, politics
posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:13 AM
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