Protesters sure are a pain. Unless you’re the Chinese Communist Party. Then protesters are easily dealt with. Except of course when the protesters are military veterans.
Yes, over 1,000 People’s Liberation Army veterans lined up outside the Chinese Ministry of National Defense in Beijing—and were quickly surrounded by police and buses so no one had to see. And believe me folks, when protesting in the capital of one of the most repressive regimes on Earth, nothing beats a Pepsi!
Eventually they were all bused away. And any mention of the protest on Chinese social media was censored.
According to an activist interviewed by AP, “veterans have staged more than 50 protests this year alone.”
And this is a problem for the Chinese Communist Party. Because it’s in some ways harder to crack down on veterans than other groups. Yes, veterans can be better organized and they come equipped with a nationwide network of comrades-in-arms. But there’s also the political risk. The Communist Party may have been able to convince the nation that Falun Gong, a peaceful meditation practice with zero political aspirations, was a dangerous group out to destroy China. It’s a little trickier to do that with your own troops
So why are veterans protesting so much in China? I mean, don’t soldiers in China have to swear an oath to “follow the leadership of the Communist Party of China?” Well, here’s one reason...
Last September, the Chinese Communist Party held a huge military parade, to celebrate how they defeated the Japanese in World War II. They did not. That was a lie. But during the parade, soldiers got to line up in rank and file, new shiny missiles were shown off, and tanks rolled down the streets of Beijing, and no students got crushed!
But troops may have realized something was amiss when Chinese Leader Xi Jinping gave his speech at the war parade, and mentioned “peace” 17 times. Because what he was trying to tell the troops was, “you’re fired.”
I mean, why do you need so many troops when China will “advance the noble cause of global peace and development,” “We Chinese love peace,” and “In the interest of peace, China will remain committed to peaceful development?” And that was all in like two paragraphs.
Xi Jinping wasn’t out to give peace of mind. He was out to give a piece of his mind—with massive layoffs. At the parade, Xi announced 300,000 military layoffs, an entire 13% of troops, to be completed by the end of 2017. Those are the biggest layoffs to hit the Chinese military since 1997, when half a million soldiers were fired. Or as the Party calls it, “demobilized.”
But the real reason for the layoffs is not that the Communist Party is peace-loving, but rather, China’s military has grown up. Literally actually, soldiers can’t fit into the old tanks.
But you see, in the good old days, you could fight a war by just throwing wave after wave of your own men at the enemy. Mao even famously said,
