Following World War II, the Korean War (1950–1953), and the Sino-Indian War (1962), nearly seven million Chinese veterans were reintegrated back into society. The Vietnam War in the 1970s produced another generation of soldiers, and the government demobilized an additional three million in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s to pare down the People's Liberation Army. Conditions greeting these veterans over the past six decades were hardly ideal. Drawing on detailed archival work, Diamant depicts the arduous plight of demobilized veterans and their families, masterfully portraying their frustrating interactions with government officials, factory bosses, and local cadres. Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may have publicly praised the soldier as a hero, veterans often characterized government policy as “slaughtering the mule after he's finished grinding the wheat” (p. 185). This derisive attitude also extended to veterans' families: local cadres took advantage of the wife left behind or appropriated the extra farmhand help (known as daigeng) for themselves when the help was meant for the families. In revealing the incongruity between the public image of the soldier-hero versus the reality of veterans' mistreatment, Diamant forcibly deepens and challenges our understanding of Chinese nationalism, citizenship, and patriotism.
Diamant's comparison of the fate of Chinese veterans with those from other countries is especially useful in driving his point home. Although all veterans faced similar difficulties upon their return, the lot of Chinese veterans was especially harsh. Instead of creating a separate office dedicated to veterans' administration, for example, the CCP assigned the work of serving veterans to Civil Affairs, an agency that government employees considered a backwater and which mainly dealt with welfare recipients. In treating the two groups alike, Civil Affairs officials accorded no respect to the veterans who felt they deserved much better for having risked their lives for the state (p. 317). Compounding veterans' ill-treatment, State Council policy documents often used watered down wording like “should” or “may” instead of the more forceful “must” when spelling out veterans' benefits (p. 224). As a result, even if Civil Affairs officials wanted to help a veteran, other bureaucracies and factory owners could easily stymie their efforts, resulting in appalling hardship for veterans and their families. In Israel, by contrast, David Ben Gurion placed veterans' affairs in the most prestigious ministry, the Ministry of Defense, providing it with full power to implement benefits (p. 291).
One would imagine that veterans would organize locally on their own behalf (Zhou Enlai had explicitly refused veterans' request to do so nationally (p. 226)). Diamant notes that because veterans of different wars received dissimilar benefits (p. 119), natural affinity among veterans was difficult. Veterans' identities were also “compromised” if they had served in the Nationalist army or had a Taiwan friend (pp. 121, 123). Even if veterans could band together, many other groups felt they could take credit for the revolution, thus diluting veterans' claims to receive their due. Most importantly, China's distinction in urban-rural status (institutionalized through the hukou or “household registration” system) prevented the sort of mixing of classes that helped improve the status of poor African Americans after World War II. Poor Chinese veterans would find no cross-societal champions among their privileged urban counterparts.
Some methodological issues might be raised about the book. Why, for example, were no surviving veterans interviewed with the exception of one veteran Diamant fortuitously encountered in the Shandong archive (p. 387)? Was this forbidden or logistically too difficult? Interviews would have added another layer of understanding to veterans' plight and answered a few questions posed in the book, such as whether veterans felt that their status was elevated through being hired in the expanding public security force after the 1989 political upheaval (p. 383). In addition, comparison to other groups in China would improve Diamant's “first cut” on this rich array of materials. He certainly makes the case that disabled veterans were treated badly, but were disabled non-veterans treated much better? Finally, from the myriad of sobering examples presented from all across China, no example emerges in which a veteran was treated well. Was this because reports tended to focus on problems rather than successes?
These are but quibbles given Diamant's service to address a critical gap in the social sciences literature on veterans' affairs (compare this with the attention on women's or labor groups). The book's striking thesis is that everyday Chinese nationalism and patriotism is weak in large part because China has “never experienced being a ‘nation-in-arms’ in a legitimate war” and the related lack of a “lived experience between classes” produced “no significant leveling effect” (p. 14). This insight makes us see old events in a new light. Diamant provides a different (and I believe more faithful) rendition of how popular society perceived the Korean War. Rather than inspiring national pride for having pushed the Americans back to the 38th parallel, the war against a recent ally and friend generated confusion and even refusal to be conscripted, especially among families who “knew someone who had been targeted by one of the CCP's campaigns” (p. 133).
Diamant ends on a provocative note by challenging us to consider whether China could appropriately be called a modern nation-state with such a “low status” military. Considered from this light, not everything can be blamed on the CCP. The kind of war that could cement national identity simply never occurred.
