Chinese soldiers’ grumbling angers Chairman Hu

Press, 3 February 1982, Page 17

Chinese soldiers’ grumbling angers Chairman Hu

By

JONATHAN MIRSKY

A revolt by demobilised soldiers in Canton and discontent in a northern garrison have shown up the scale of resentment among People’s Liberation Army men who cannot share in China’s new rural prosperity. Impatient with the troops’ economic discontent, the party chairman, Hu Yaobang, has reportedly told them it is an honour “to suffer loss for the people.” Hu’s statement is one of a series from the Peking leadership over many months questioning the quality of the Army, once beyond reproach, which is held to have been severely damaged during the Cultural Revolution. “The Army’s reputation is not as good as in the 19505,” says the ideological magazine “Red Flag.” According to reports, subsequently denied in Peking, thousands of demobilised soldiers, calling themselves “the disillusioned army,” occupied a country town in Guangdong province last July, stormed local offices, and after seizing a party official, liberated five imprisoned comrades. Security forces took several days to suppress the insurrection which, according to a Hong Kong journalist, “shook the entire western part of Guandong province.” After the official denials, the reporter, from Hong Kong’s “Zheng Ming” newspaper, returned to the scene of the uprising where, in late December, he read court documents announcing the

ringleaders’ sentences and government propaganda “urging the masses of demobilised servicemen who had been ‘duped’ to draw lessons from the incident.” What is disclosed by the court documents is a period of military unrest reaching back at least two years, including assault on communes, illegal animal slaughtering, tax evasion, and a network of angry veterans, waving their own flag, who, in their final outburst last July, wounded 34 policemen. The veterans were demanding jobs. No longer able to use the Army as a springboard into relatively wellpaying urban work — which is now hard to find — the

demobilised servicemen, according to the Hong Kong disclosures, dislike being returned to their villages,where they are much poorer than those from farm families whose young men have not served in the Army. That families with fewer hands to help with the farming are now at an economic disadvantage is confirmed by the local radio in Tianjin, a major north-eastern industrial city, which has broadcast that “some army men have worried about the lack of labour forces at home and have been unable to feel at ease in the Army.” The radio described one army unit writing home “on behalf of 24 army men” (why they did not write them-

selves was not explained) to reassure their families “about the gratifying changes brought about by the party’s economic policies in their native villages.” It appears that country girls no longer find soldiers a good marriage bet, preferring the stay-at-home farmers prospering on their individual holding in line with the post-Mao directive to “get rich” by cultivating private holdings. Soldiers are also said to feel “it is a bad thing to be in the Army” because now only military academy graduates can become officers — a high hurdle for peasant recruits whose local schools cannot prepare them for the academies’ stiff, entrance examinations. Better-educated urban youths are entering the Army as an alternative to city joblessness. They raise the technical standard of the forces where, Vice-Chairman Deng Xiaoping contends, the day is over when courage, a rifle, a bayonet, and a grenade were enough for a soldier.

In the meantime, Chairman Hu has told the Army that it is “totally unacceptable” for soldiers to bewail their financial misfortune. Such grumbling is inconceivable for a man who at the age of 19 was risking his life on the Long March. Copyright- — London Observer Service.