Disturbing but not politically threatening: Veterans' activism in the Xi Era

In October 2016, more than 1,000 veterans rallied outside the Ministry of National Defence in Beijing in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to demand better government support. In February 2017, a similar incident occurred outside the offices of the Central Commission for Discipline and Inspection, also in the capital. The next year, more than 1,000 veterans from a dozen provinces gathered in Luohe city, Henan province, to support a fellow veteran whom they believed had been harassed by local police after petitioning Beijing over her husband’s post-service job assignment. In June 2018, more than 2,000 veterans convened in Zhenjiang city, Jiangsu province, for a similar cause. In October that year, violence broke out in Pingdu city, Shandong province, when veterans armed themselves with wooden sticks and fire extinguishers and clashed with police.

These events highlight a growing sense of dissatisfaction among veterans 退役军人 (former members of the People’s Liberation Army, including officers and soldiers) and frustration with the government’s handling of their concerns. Such public displays of discontent on the part of veterans have gained the attention of international media, with the Voice of America describing such activism as a thorn in the flesh of the party-state. A Hoover Institution report asserts that the ongoing activism ‘must be a source of intense anxiety for [President] Xi Jinping and the leadership’. Kevin J. O’Brien, a China expert at the University of California, Berkeley, cautions that when such ‘disaffected insiders’ feel that the system is not serving them well, their discontent could be a sign that the regime is corroding from within.

Activist veterans are indeed a cause of concern to the Communist Party of China (CPC), as they possess unique features that make them more threatening than other protest groups. First, official propaganda hails veterans as heroes and defenders of the nation-state. Their public defiance of state authorities could signal declining solidarity among the groups considered to be in closest accord with the regime. Their contentious actions could also shake other people’s faith in the system and embolden other protest groups. Second, veterans have exceptional disruptive capabilities, as they have acquired organisational, communication, and combat skills in the armed forces. The fact that they would have served with people from around the country makes them more capable than other social groups of organising cross-regional collective actions. When these well-trained personnel redirect their energies from external enemies to state authorities, their actions can have severe implications for grassroots stability.

Although veteran activism can be disturbing, they do not constitute a genuine threat to the rule of the CPC. As part of a group that is broadly sympathetic to the regime, activist veterans primarily focus on addressing defective policies and policy implementation, rather than toppling the regime or seeking structural political reforms. The Ministry of Veterans Affairs, established in 2018, may not be able to address veterans’ concerns in full or straight away, but it does provide alternative institutional channels through which veterans can voice their grievances, such as petitions rather than street protests.