Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T11:05:14.212Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Neil J. Diamant
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Keywords

ChinaveteransPeople's Liberation Armyveterans organizationsdisabilityrightsemploymentconscriptionpatriotismcitizenship
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , April 2008 , pp. 119 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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

1. The term “civil religion” (which has a legacy running from Rousseau to Durkheim and Robert Bellah) is often associated with this effort.Google Scholar

2. The PRC does have an Army Day (August 1) during which the state celebrates the achievements of the military and “comforts” (naiwen) military dependents, family members of revolutionary martyrs, and disabled veterans; but it is generally seen as a day to support mobilized soldiers and their families, not veterans.Google Scholar

3. Nor is there a separate Veterans Administration. In Korea, South, the link between veterans and patriotism is quite explicit: the agency that administers to veterans is called the Patriots and Veterans Agency.Google Scholar

4. According to Hong, Chang-tai, the “more-or-less standard pattern” in parades after 1951 gave representation to an honor guard, Young Pioneers, workers, peasants, government employees, urbanites, representatives from industrial and commercial sectors, students, artists and performers, and athletes. See his “Mao's Parades: State Spectacles in China in the 1950s,” The China Quarterly 190 (June 2007): 417–418.Google Scholar

5. Shanghai Municipal Archive (SMA hereafter) B168-1-655, p. 5.Google Scholar

6. Diamant, Neil J., “Hollow Glory.” In Diamant, Neil J., Lubman, Stanley, and O'Brien, Kevin J., eds., Engaging the Law in China: State, Society and Possibilities for Justice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 131–160.Google Scholar

7. This protest did not receive extensive coverage, quite unlike the protests against Japan the same year. See Asia, Radio Free, April 13, 2005.Google Scholar

8. Most African countries do not have a Veterans Day, except for those tied to the British Commonwealth. In America, Latin, only Argentina has a Veterans Day. Victory Day is celebrated in Eastern Europe, and veterans are honored at this time. Veterans Day is more common in Western Europe, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Oceania.Google Scholar

9. Weiner, Amir, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), ch. 1.Google Scholar

10. Edele, Mark, “A Generation of Victors”? Soviet Second World War Veterans from Demobilization to Organization, 1941–1956,” (PhD diss., Department of History, University of Chicago, 2004), pp. 500–505, 517–518.Google Scholar

11. See “Vietnamese Begin to Question if War Was Worth Sacrifices: Popular New Book Is Soldier's Angry Tale,” Washington Post , November 12, 1991.Google Scholar

12. Berezin, Mabel, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Inter-war Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 75–76, 83–84.Google Scholar

13. Aguilar, Paloma, “Agents of Memory: Spanish Civil War Veterans and Disabled Soldiers.” In Winter, Jay and Sivan, Emmanuel, eds., War and Remembrance in the 20th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 86–90, 96, 101. Democratic states have many veterans organizations—generally one per war. In the United States, we could point to the Grand Army of the Republic, the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vietnam War Veterans Association, and the Afghanistan and Iraq War Veterans Association; in the UK, the British Legion; and in Australia, the Returned Servicemen's League (RSL), one of the most successful of all veterans associations, thanks to their very feisty tactics. See Kristianson, G. L., The Politics of Patriotism: The Pressure Group Activities of the Returned Servicemen's League (Canberra: Australia National University Press, 1966), pp. 189, 212.Google Scholar

14. To be sure, these problems did not affect all veterans all the time—higher ranking officers were more successful in the transition to civilian life, as were veterans who were sent in large groups (1,000+) to take over cities or where they constituted a majority of cadres in a party organization—but they did shape the lives of hundreds of thousands in the enlisted ranks and junior officers, particularly the 70–80 percent of discharged soldiers who did not become bureaucrats and were forced to return to agriculture or relatively menial jobs in the industrial sector of the economy. For an excellent account of rural revolutionaries transforming a city, see Gao, James, The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1954 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004). The number of veterans able to become officials varied over time and place but rarely exceeded 35 percent, and most of these positions were at the village level and below. For instance, a report from Kunshan County near Shanghai noted that they received 1,258 veterans in 1960, of whom 492 (35 percent) became “cadres and people's representatives” (SMA B168-1-655, p. 2); in Qingpu, a military investigation team showed that in an eleven-year period (1951–1962), 9 percent of 1,007 veterans received positions at the commune or county levels. Qingpu Archives (QA hereafter) 48-2-155, p. 23.Google Scholar

15. Townsend, James, “Chinese Nationalism.” In Unger, Jonathan, ed., Chinese Nationalism (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), pp. 20–21. Townsend was rightfully suspicious of accounts of popular nationalism in the post-Mao period, however (p. 23).Google Scholar

16. I used the term “widespread” following reports that indicate “very many problems,” “very serious problems,” or “not a few problems” in a revised document that in its first draft used the adjective “widespread” (pubian). See SMA B123-3-1442, p. 6; SMA B168-1-628, p. 30.Google Scholar

17. QA 48-2-105 (1957), 136.Google Scholar

18. SMA B168-1-628 (1956), p. 162; SMA B168-1-628, p. 90. In a single factory in Shandong, eighty veterans, angry at the CCP, refused to register for the reserves. See Shandong Provincial Archive (SPA hereafter) A1-2-516 (1957), p. 17.Google Scholar

19. This war reported by General Fu Qiutao, head of the National Veterans Committee. SMA B1-2-1958 (1957), p. 30.Google Scholar

20. Nash, Gary B., The Unknown American Revolution (New York: Viking Penguin, 2005), pp. 216–217.Google Scholar

21. Skelly, Alan, The Victorian Army at Home (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1977), pp. 297–298.Google Scholar

22. Keep, John, Soldiers of the Czar: Army and Society in Russia, 1492–1874 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 147.Google Scholar

23. By law and as a reflection of civic republicanism, all Chinese can be drafted. In practice, however, the state draws its soldiers largely from the peasantry and working class. The PLA, by definition, was a “liberation” army and drew its personnel largely from among the “exploited” classes. It would be best described as “selective conscription.” Google Scholar

24. An analysis of 2,105 veterans in Shanghai in 1952 noted that 64 percent were either illiterate or had only a primary school education, 34 percent had attended middle school, and 3 percent had university experience. See SMA B168-1-607, p. 53.Google Scholar

25. SPA A1-2-519, p. 19.Google Scholar

26. Zedong, Mao, “On Physical Education.” In Schram, Stuart, The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung (New York: Penguin, 1974); Morris, Andrew, Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).Google Scholar

27. SPA A1-2-519, p. 19.Google Scholar

28. SMA B168-1-607, p. 54.Google Scholar

29. Qingpu District Archives (QA hereafter) 48-2-141, p. 12.Google Scholar

30. SPA A20-l-029, p. 17.Google Scholar

31. Garton, Stephen, The Cost of War: Australians Return (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 191; Hartmann, Susan, The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Boston: Twayne, 1982).Google Scholar

32. SMA B168-1-607, p. 73.Google Scholar

33. Ningguo xian zhi (Beijing: Sanlian, 1997), p. 574; SPA A20-1-109, p. 47.Google Scholar

34. Donzhi xian zhi (Hefei: Anhui renmin chubanshe, 1991), p. 538.Google Scholar

35. Very little information exists on suicide rates across occupational groups, so it is difficult to establish if veterans' experiences were unique. But suicide does reveal the gap between official status and the everyday predicament many veterans faced.Google Scholar

36. SMA B168-1-628, p. 22.Google Scholar

37. SMA B168-1-633, p. 78.Google Scholar

38. SPA A20-1-109, p. 48.Google Scholar

39. State Council Office on Veteran Resettlement, Jundui ganbu zhuanye fuyuan gongzuo wenjian huibian, 1950–1982 (Beijing: Laodong renshi chubanshe, 1983), pp. 159–160 (Jundui ganbu hereafter).Google Scholar

40. QA 48-2-30, unpaginated.Google Scholar

41. As far as I can tell, the PLA, which might have lobbied more aggressively for them, was completely out of this loop.Google Scholar

42. SMA B168-1-628, p. 73; Jundui ganbu , p. 158.Google Scholar

43. SMA B168-1-628, p. 74. All firms preferred hiring temporary workers “from society” rather than veterans.Google Scholar

44. SMA B127-1-358, p. 38; Jundui ganbu , p. 162.Google Scholar

45. QA 48-1-40, p. 18.Google Scholar

46. SMA B168-1-628 (1956), pp. 45–46, 74; SMA B168-1-517, p. 139.Google Scholar

47. This was not an isolated problem, as it came to the attention of the State Council in national-level reports about veteran issues. See Jundui ganbu , p. 162.Google Scholar

48. Although there is no direct evidence for this, it is possible that this conflict masked regional tensions: most union officials came from the lower Yangze region, traditionally a fairly wealthy area with a long tradition of discriminating against relatively poor and unsophisticated northerners, the recruiting ground for the PLA. On these tensions, see Perry, Elizabeth, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

49. For evidence of Shandong suicides in the early 1950s, see SPA A20-1-81 (1953), p. 62. For the mid-1950s, see SPA Al-2-516 (1957), p. 17. For the early 1960s, see SPA A20-1-332, p. 1.Google Scholar

50. SMA B168-1-628, p. 22.Google Scholar

51. Dongcheng District Archive (DDA hereafter), 11-7-306 (1959), p. 3.Google Scholar

52. On war producing a new, “assertive” citizen, see Weiner, , Making Sense of War , p. 67; for “frankness” of veterans, see Prost, Antoine, In the Wake of War: ‘Les Anciens Combattants’ and French Society, translated by McPhail, Helen (Providence: Berg, 1992), pp. 106–107.Google Scholar

53. Jundui ganbu , p. 159.Google Scholar

54. SMA B168-1-619, p. 70; QA 48-2-155, p. 24; SMA B168-1-641, p. 14; SPA A20-1-109, pp. 4-5; SPA A101-1-607, p. 28.Google Scholar

55. QA 48-2-98, p. 66.Google Scholar

56. See People's Daily, April 3, 1955 (“Unreasonably Refusing to Hire Veterans”); August 3, 1955 (Shanxi); December 25, 1955 (Jiangsu, Taicang county); November 29, 1956 (Liaoning); October 19, 1956, for a Letter to the Editor titled “Why Aren't Veterans Being Hired?” For a letter of encouragement, see May 9, 1955.Google Scholar

57. Shandong officials commented extensively on this problem, which they deemed “very serious.” Almost all northeastern cities witnessed an influx of veterans. See SPA A20-1-109, p. 48. For Shanghai, , see B168-1-607, p. 74.Google Scholar

58. Shandong xinzheng gongbao , December 1954, p. 13; SMA B168-1-607, p. 74; People's Daily, May 6, 1954.Google Scholar

59. SMA B1-2-1519 (1954), pp. 1–3; SMA B168-1-649 (1960), p. 19.Google Scholar

60. SMA B168-1-658 (1961), pp. 43–44; SMA B168-1-607 (1952), p. 50.Google Scholar

61. Shandong xinzheng gongbao , December 1954, p. 13.Google Scholar

62. SMA B168-1-607 (1952), p. 74; SMA B168-1-611 (1952), p. 124; Jundui ganbu, p. 159.Google Scholar

63. SMA B1-2-1958, p. 55.Google Scholar

64. Brooks, Jennifer E., Defining the Peace: World War II, Veterans, Race, and the Remaking of the Southern Political Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), p. 24.Google Scholar

65. SMAB168-1-628, p. 162.Google Scholar

66. Shandong xinzheng gongbao (December 1955), p. 13.Google Scholar

67. QA 48-2-71 (1955), p. 38.Google Scholar

68. SMA B168-1-619, p. 52.Google Scholar

69. SMA B168-1-633 (1957), p. 81; SMA B168-1-619, p. 52.Google Scholar

70. SMA B168-1-619, p. 53.Google Scholar

71. SMA B98-1-98 (1956), p. 14.Google Scholar

72. SMA B168-1-628, pp. 43–44.Google Scholar

73. This meant that if a veteran was an apprentice in 1950, joined the military for five years, and then returned to the factory, his salary should be based on five “work years.” Google Scholar

74. SMA B168-1-628, p. 88; SMA B168-1-633, p. 79; QA 48-2-141, p. 14.Google Scholar

75. See issue of November 29, 1955.Google Scholar

76. SMA B127-1-358, p. 37.Google Scholar

77. SMA B168-1-628, pp. 140–154; B168-1-666, p. 9; B168-1-649 (1960), p. 30; SMA B168-1-666, p. 9.Google Scholar

78. Perry, Elizabeth, “The Shanghai Strike Wave of 1957,” China Quarterly , no. 137 (1994): 1–27.Google Scholar

79. SMA B168-1-633 (1957), p. 79; B168-1-649 (1960), p. 31; People's Daily, September 22, 1957.Google Scholar

80. For a thorough overview of Republican era institutions, see Strauss, Julia, Strong Institutions in Weak Politics: State-Building in Republican China, 1927–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

81. Lieberthal, Kenneth and Oksenberg, Michel, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures and Processes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), ch. 2; David Bachman attributes the Great Leap Forward to conflicts among bureaucrats, particularly the “planning” and “financial and heavy industry” bureaucratic coalitions. See Bachman, , Bureaucracy, Economy and Leadership in China: The Institutional Origins of the Great Leap Forward (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

82. Wong, Although Linda, in her Marginalization and Social Welfare in China (London: Routledge, 1998), does not write specifically about the Civil Affairs bureaucracy, she relies extensively on its published documents, statistics and policy statements.Google Scholar

83. For an elaboration of the bureau's role in marriage and divorce, see Diamant, Neil, “Making Love ‘Legible’ in China: Politics and Society During the Enforcement of Civil Marriage Registration, 1950–1966,” Politics and Society 29, no. 2 (June 2001): 447–480.Google Scholar

84. Interview with Bureau of Civil Affairs director, Qingpu County, February 1994.Google Scholar

85. SMA B168-1-607, p. 70; DDA 11-7-74, p. 1; DDA 11-7-400, pp. 6-7; DDA 11-7-116, p. 5 Google Scholar

86. Minzheng Jianbao , August 15, 1956, p. 56.Google Scholar

87. Ibid., pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

88. SMA B168-1-628, p. 47.Google Scholar

89. SMA B1-2-1958, p. 21.Google Scholar

90. SMA B123-6-1374 (1965), pp. 15–18.Google Scholar

91. SMA B168-1-619 (1954), p. 10.Google Scholar

92. SMA B1-2-1958, p. 20.Google Scholar

93. SMA B127-1-811 (1954), p. 6.Google Scholar

94. Songjiang xian zhi (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 1991), p. 284.Google Scholar

95. SMA B168-1-600, p. 111.Google Scholar

96. Israel, Adrienne, “Ex-Servicemen at the Crossroads: Protest and Politics in Post-War Ghana,” Journal of Modern African Studies 30, no. 2 (1992), pp. 361–362.Google Scholar

97. Jessup, Mary, The Public Reaction to the Returned Service Man After World War I (Washington, DC: US Department of Labor, 1944), pp. 10, 16–18, 21, 32.Google Scholar

98. Brooks, , Defining the Peace , p. 17.Google Scholar

99. Homer, , The Illiad , translated by Fagles, Robert (New York: Viking, 1990), p. 122; Sophocles, , Philoctetes, translated by Carl Phillips (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 73.Google Scholar

100. Linderman, Gerald noted, “The first shock of the Civil War soldier was the extent and deadliness of disease.” See Linderman, , Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1987), pp. 115–116.Google Scholar

101. Ramos, Henry, The American G.I. Forum: In Pursuit of the Dream, 1948–1983 (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1998), pp. 3–4; according to Carl Allsup, Mexican-Americans had the highest incidence of illness and disease because of poverty and discrimination. See The American G.I. Forum: Origins and Evolution (Austin: Center for Mexican-American Studies, University of Texas, 1982), pp. 57–58.Google Scholar

102. Resch, John, Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment and Political Culture in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), p. 62.Google Scholar

103. Cited in Gerber, David, “Heroes and Misfits: The Troubled Social Reintegration of Disabled Veterans in ‘The Best Years of Our Lives,”’ American Quarterly 46, no. 4 (1994): 548.Google Scholar

104. See Havighurst, Robert J., Eaton, Walter H., Baughman, John W., and Burgess, Ernest W., The American Veteran Back Home: A Study of Veteran Readjustment (New York: Longmans, Green, 1951), pp. 72, 78, 90.Google Scholar

105. Gerber, , “Heroes and Misfits,” p. 550.Google Scholar

106. Cohen, Deborah, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany 1914–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

107. Koven, Seth, “Remembering and Dismemberment: Crippled Children, Wounded Soldiers and the Great War in Great Britain,” American Historical Review 99, no. 4 (1994), p. 1189. This proposal came to naught.Google Scholar

108. For Australian veterans who were cuckolded by their wives while they were away at war, see Garton, , The Cost of War , p. 235.Google Scholar

109. Among young adults in the Western zones of postwar Germany, there were 1,700 women for every 1,000 men of the same age. See Heineman, Elisabeth, “The Hour of the Woman: Memories of Germany's ‘Crisis Years’ and West German National Identity,” American Historical Review 101, no. 2 (April 1996): 374, 380.Google Scholar

110. Turner, Karen Gottschang with Hao, Phan Thanh, Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam (New York: John Wiley, 1998), p. 152.Google Scholar

111. Dower, John W., Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999), p. 60.Google Scholar

112. Morton, Desmond and Wright, Glenn, Winning the Second Battle: Canadian Veterans and the Return to Civilian Life, 1915–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), p. 118.Google Scholar

113. Davey, Monica, “For Soldiers Back from Iraq, Basic Training in Resuming Life,” New York Times , May 31, 2004; Myers, Steven Lee, “Returning from Iraq War Not So Simple for Soldiers,” New York Times, September 12, 2003.Google Scholar

114. O'Leary, Cecilia, To Die For: The Paradox of American Patriotism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 47.Google Scholar

115. Kristianson, , The Politics of Patriotism , pp. 189, 212.Google Scholar

116. Weiner, , Making Sense of War , pp. 45, 49, 57.Google Scholar

117. Prost, , In the Wake of War , pp. 29, 34, 46–47.Google Scholar

118. Cohen, , The War Come Home. Google Scholar

119. Bodnar, John, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the 20th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 84.Google Scholar

120. Brooks, , Defining the Peace , p. 7.Google Scholar

121. West, Owen, “America's Troops Have Moved On,” International Herald Tribune , May 29, 2006. The all-volunteer army is highly problematic in wartime, not only from a manpower perspective and the unfair distribution of sacrifice, but also in terms of facilitating public disengagement from the conflict.Google Scholar

122. Reese, Peter, Homecoming Heroes: An Account of the Reassimilation of British Military Personnel into Civilian Life (London: Leo Cooper, 1992), p. 44.Google Scholar

123. One scholar has argued that “the social history of nations is largely molded by the forms and development of their armed forces.” This is attributed to the historian SirNamier, Lewis and cited in Hackett, Roger, “Japan.” In Ward, Robert and Rustow, Dankwart, eds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 328.Google Scholar

124. By “mass army,” I rely on Barry Posen's definition. He argues that “mass” refers to both size and “its ability to maintain its size in the face of the rigors of war,” and its ability to “retain its combat power.” See Posen, , “Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power,” International Security 18, no. 2 (Fall 1993): 83. Posen does not note the level of social integration, but does attribute the rise of nationalism in Europe to warfare. By the same token, countries that have not experienced mass warfare, especially of a protracted nature, would be less “nationalistic.” For a similar argument about the indispensable role of mass armies in the generation of nationalism and patriotism, see Porter, Bruce, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics (New York: Free Press, 1994).Google Scholar

125. According to Liu, F. F., a former Nationalist officer, the GMD enjoyed “at best a precarious unity” and therefore was “not organized well enough at all levels to provide that general mobilization of all resources which total war, by the very nature of its name, demands.” See Liu, , A Military History of Modern China, 1924–1949 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), pp. 108, 222. Perry, Elizabeth and Xun, Li note the “heavily peasant and proletarian composition of the army.” See their “Revolutionary Rudeness: The Language of Red Guards and Rebel Workers in China's Cultural Revolution,” Indiana East Asian Working Paper Series on Language and Politics in Modern China 2 (Summer 1993), p. 5. According to the late political scientist Gordon White, this “class bias” continued after conscription was introduced in 1955 “for reasons of ideological rectitude and national security.” See White, , “The Politics of Demobilization from Liberation to the Cultural Revolution,” China Quarterly 82 (June 1980): 191. The eminent historian Maurice Meisner also wrote that the PLA was “composed mostly of peasants.” See Meisner, , Marxism, Maoism and Utopianism: Eight Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), p. 177. Shichor, Yitzhak, an Israeli expert on the PLA, notes that peasants were the armed forces' “main source of manpower.” See “Demobilization: The Dialectics of PLA Troop Reduction,” The China Quarterly, no. 146 (1996): 338. During the Korean War, the CCP relied on mass campaigns to recruit soldiers, but even these efforts were improvised. People would be asked to volunteer at mass meetings, and families of those who refused to volunteer were visited by an ad hoc committee to “persuade them to ‘send off’ their sons to the army.” If this failed, a “struggle meeting might be organized, while members of the youth group would sing songs satirizing the reluctant volunteers.” Of course, volunteers were lauded as “true patriots.” See Gittings, John, The Role of the Chinese Army (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 84–85. As the first “national war” after the establishment of the PRC, it would appear that more “students” entered the PLA. According to Gittings, 1,750,000 was the “rough upper limit” for recruitment, which added to roughly 4 million in field armies and garrison armies. Students were recruited to serve, but the goal of the recruitment campaign was to “skim the technical and political cream of China's student and working class population for the armed forces.” Students from technical schools with specialized qualifications (chemistry, engineering, and the like) were “particularly sought after.” In the southwest, workers were not recruited into the military owing to the poor economic conditions. In a second recruitment campaign in June 1951, no workers were recruited. Among students sent to the front, many were quite young (the lower age limit was sixteen) junior middle school graduates (because there was a “surplus”) and therefore not destined to be among the elite. Among medical personnel, it is estimated that 7–8 percent served in Korea by the middle of 1951. Some 4,000 Shanghai railway workers served, although it is not clear in what capacity (pp. 80–83).Google Scholar

126. Stouffer, Samuel et al., The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath , vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 309.Google Scholar

127. For accounts of wartime collaboration in the Yangzi Delta, see Brook, Timothy, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); and “Occupation State Building,” in Mackinnon, Stephen, Lary, Diana, and Vogel, Ezra (eds.), China at War: Regions of China, 1937–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 22–43; for North China, see Thaxton, Ralph Jr., Salt of the Earth: The Political Origins of Peasant Protest and Communist Revolution in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 208–213. According to military historian Arthur Waldron, World War II “was simply an opportunity to continue score settling or self-aggrandizement under new conditions.” See Waldron, , “From Jaurès to Mao: The Levée en Masse in China.” In Moran, Daniel and Waldron, Arthur, eds., The People in Arms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 207. Liu, F. F., the former Nationalist officer, also noted that after the battles for Shanghai and Nanjing, which resulted in the loss of 60 percent of the total strength of the military (Chiang Kai-shek committed three-fifths of his total troop strength to these battles), “the strategy of sacrifice … was gradually abandoned” and China “settled down to a calculated and less spectacular strategy of dissipating Japanese might and forcing Japan to overextend herself.” See Liu, , A Military History, p. 108.Google Scholar

128. See Mackinnon, Stephen, “Conclusion: Wartime China.” In China at War: Regions of China, 1937–1945 , p. 343.Google Scholar

129. See Yung-fa, Chen, Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), for the difficulties in getting peasants to join the military when the Japanese forces were nearby. The classic articulation of peasant nationalism is in Chalmers Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962).Google Scholar

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

131. Zhang, Jishun, “Cultural Consumption and Popular Reception of the West in Shanghai, 1950–1966,” The Chinese Historical Review 12, no. 2 (2005): 101, 120.Google Scholar

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

134. For this sort of evidence of “mass nationalism” in the early stages of the reform period, see Harding, Harry, China's Second Revolution: Reform After Mao (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987), p. 245. For the late 1990s, see Gries, , China's New Nationalism. Google Scholar

135. Nationalist intelligence collected a great deal of information on PRC veterans, including many original documents. See Gongjun futui zhuanye zhenxiang (Taipei: Ministry of Defense, 1984), Bureau of Justice Archives (Xindian, Taipei), pp. 170–171.Google Scholar

136. Ibid., pp. 172–173.Google Scholar

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

138. Lianjiang, Li, “Political Trust in Rural China,” Modern China 30, no. 2 (April 2004): 244.Google Scholar

139. O'Brien, Kevin and Lianjiang, Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 88, 89, notes 20, 136.Google Scholar

140. Bernstein, Thomas P. and Xiaobo, Lü, 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