Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families, and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949-2007

377 Pages·2.91 MB·English

by  Neil Jeffrey Diamant

Embattled Glory
STATE AND SOCIETY IN EAST ASIA
Series Editor: Elizabeth J. Perry
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By Patricio Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso
Revolution in the Highlands: China’s Jinggangshan Base Area
By Stephen Averill
Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families, and the Politics of Patriotism in China,
1949–2007
By Neil J. Diamant
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Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern
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A Chinese Economic Revolution: Rural Entrepreneurship in the Twentieth Century
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Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times
By Philip A. Kuhn
Webs of Smoke: Smugglers, Warlords, Spies, and the History of the International Drug
Trade
By Kathryn Meyer and Terry Parssinen
Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship, and the Modern Chinese State
By Elizabeth J. Perry
Of Camel Kings and Other Things: Rural Rebels against Modernity in Late Imperial China
By Roxann Prazniak
Underground: The Shanghai Communist Party and the Politics of Survival, 1927–1937
By Patricia Stranahan
Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict
By Yuezhi Zhao
Embattled Glory
Veterans, Military Families,
and the Politics of Patriotism
in China, 1949–2007
Neil J. Diamant
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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Copyright © 2009 Rowman & Littlefield
First paperback edition 2010
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Diamant, Neil Jeffrey, 1964–
Embattled glory : veterans, military families, and the politics of patriotism in China, 1949–2007 / by Neil J. Diamant.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Veterans—China—Social conditions. 2. Veterans—China—Political activity—History. 3. Families of military personnel—
China—Social conditions. 4. Patriotism—Political aspects—China—History. 5. China—Social conditions—1949– I. Title.
UB359.C6D53 2009
2008032620
305.9'697095109045—dc2
ISBN: 978-0-7425-5766-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 978-0-7425-5767-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN: 978-0-7425-5768-0 (electronic)
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
For my family
Table of Contents
Preface
1 Introduction
2 To the City or Bust: Veterans and the Quest for Urban Citizenship
3 The Complications of Veteran Identities
4 The Job Front
5 Stuck in the State’s Cement and Falling through Its Cracks: Veterans in Policy and
Bureaucracy
6 Vulnerable Heroes: Veterans’ Health, Family, and Sexuality in Chinese Politics
7 Between Glory and Welfare: Military Families, the State, and Community
8 Salt in the Wounds: Veterans in the Reform Era, 1978–2007
9 Conclusion: Walter Reed, Iraq, and China
Appendix A: A Brief Survey of Archival Materials in China
Appendix B: Selected Character List
Appendix C: Source Materials
Index
About the Author
Preface
This book is the culmination of years of thinking about the meanings of a war I had to join, a
tax I had to pay, and the sex I wanted to get—in short, the three three-letter words that have
long preoccupied the minds of millions of men.
Allow me to explain. In 1977 my family picked up and moved from a comfortable middle-
class life in Westchester, New York, to a collective agricultural settlement in Israel—what is
called a kibbutz in Israel and a commune in the United States and the People’s Republic of
China. Then and even now, the path to a respectable manhood in the kibbutz passed through the
military: the older teenage kibbutzniks we looked up to all served in elite units in the Israeli
Defense Forces, with mysterious names like “669” in the Air Force, “Sayeret Matkal” (the
General Staff’s anti-terror unit), “Shayetet 13” (Naval commandos), and “Raven”—the
paratrooper’s “tank-hunting” squads. On weekends these soldiers would come home, bronzed
from the sun, each sporting a young woman on his arm. When it came time for me to begin my
own military service in 1982, there was little doubt in my mind that I would serve in a combat
unit as well: it was what was done, and it was the surest way to secure the attention of young
women who might be attracted to a soldier returning from the field caked with dirt and grime.
Unluckily for me, my years of service (1982–1985) coincided with Israel’s first large-scale
war in Lebanon. Not long after completing basic training, we were sent to relieve soldiers on
the Syrian front. When we were not training in the Golan Heights, we were in forward outposts
conducting patrols, three-hour shifts of guard duty, all-night ambushes, and live-fire exercises.
And, like the teenagers before me, my chest was puffed out just a little bit further when I
walked into the communal dining hall during weekend leaves. For a kid from Westchester, this
was great stuff—I felt Israeli. Whether this was true or not, whatever success I had with
women at the time, I (surely mistakenly!) attributed to having “become a man” by serving in a
combat unit. At the time, I was not particularly attuned to the controversies surrounding the
Lebanon War, now considered the most illegitimate and ill-conceived exercise of military
force in Israel’s history, even though I was well aware of its cost. One soft-spoken young man
(three years my elder) who served in the Golani Brigade was killed in the summer of ’82. So,
when told in briefings that it was necessary to be in telescope (and artillery) range of
Damascus “in order to protect the north of Israel,” I didn’t think too much about it. Only when
Israel pulled back from Lebanon’s north to occupy a 40-kilometer “security strip” along the
southern border, just as I was completing my service and getting ready to enter Hebrew
University, did I scratch my head and think, “What about all those briefings about the necessity
of being stationed on the Syrian border?” Not long after this, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon
was forced out of his job after being condemned by an independent state commission
examining the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut, and
a massive demonstration against him took place in the heart of Tel Aviv.
Even though I ended my compulsory service in 1985, the military continued to require
sacrifices from its former combat soldiers. Every year at Hebrew University, often during
exam time, the telltale brown envelope from the army would come, informing me of upcoming
reserve duty. When the first Palestinian intifada broke out, it was not uncommon to serve three
or more weeks in the reserves. But this was not all. The war in Lebanon still had to be paid
for. The government instituted a new tax for this purpose: $100 for all Israelis who exited the
country, whether for business, pleasure, or visiting sick relatives abroad. Even though the war
remained controversial and the tax was not particularly fair—why should former combat
troops have to pay the same as soldiers who spent their service living it up in Tel Aviv?—
people paid it without too much brouhaha. The tax was finally cancelled roughly seven years
later, when I was already a graduate student at Berkeley.
It was this experience in the military and as a citizen of Israel that left me intellectually
unprepared for “wartime” in the United States, where I now teach. Even though this country has
been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for close to six years already (a war that has been
described as a battle for the future of Western civilization) and the military is suffering from
manpower shortages, there is little discussion of a draft, a war tax, the sale of war bonds, or
some form of compulsory national service; American citizens who are not serving in the
military do not have to sacrifice anything, and they have not been asked to. Nevertheless,
bumper stickers proclaiming “support for the troops” abound, and politicians, few of whom
have any children in the military, compete with each other in their professed support for the
soldiers. Even though the war in Iraq is deeply unpopular, there have been few large-scale
public protests, and many opponents of the war have been intimidated by the mere intimation
that not supporting the president’s policies is “unpatriotic.” I have had a very difficult time
wrapping my mind around these things. Personally, as a citizen, and as a matter of public
policy, I find the disjuncture between the highfalutin rhetoric and the lack of national
mobilization very puzzling.
This contrast constitutes the intellectual and personal baggage I bring to this book on China
(in comparative perspective). It has propelled my interest in the legitimacy of wars as well as
the meanings, values, costs, and rewards attached to “heroic” military service, patriotism,
nationalism, and citizenship—concepts that, for the most part, originated in the West but have
been used in the Asian context for more than a century. How can we assess the legitimacy of a
war and, by implication, the state? Exactly what constitutes “sacrifice” that deserves to be
rewarded, and who determines what form of military service is important to the state and
society? To what extent is military service considered a path to upward mobility (and sexual
attractiveness)? What is the meaning of citizenship with and without sacrifice or a sharing of
costs? Can there be a sense of nationhood without shared experiences? Who gets to be
recognized as “patriotic” or not in the context of war and peace, and why? These are,
admittedly, big questions that cannot have very tidy answers, but they are ones well worth
asking. Over the last three centuries, wars have created states and destroyed empires, and
states have mobilized citizens with appeals to patriotism and nationalism. War-making has
produced new groups of people with powerful claims for recognition and status as well as
those who refuse to accept the legitimacy of these demands. How these claims and
counterclaims play out in state bureaucracies, neighborhoods, the workplace, and more
everyday encounters should be of interest not only to students of politics but also to more
casual observers of the contemporary political scene. Who will be blamed for the problems in
Iraq and Afghanistan? Who will be able to claim success if the outcome is more favorable?
Whose patriotism will be impugned and whose will be bolstered by the war’s outcome? And
how will all this affect those who actually did the fighting and endured numerous sacrifices?
In my pursuit of answers to these questions, I have been a very grateful recipient of grants
and fellowships from several foundations as well as the support of academic institutions on
three continents. Travel, research, and writing support were generously provided by the Ford
Foundation, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Freeman Foundation, the Fulbright Scholarship
Board, the Research and Development Committee of Dickinson College, the East Asian
Institute of South Korea, and the George and Eliza Gardner Foundation. I also benefited from
research and scholarly support from four intellectual homes in the past decade: Tel Aviv
University in Israel, the University of Pittsburgh, Dickinson College, and the Shanghai
Academy of Social Sciences, whose director of scholarly exchange, Li Yihai, provided the
crucial support that made my research (considered quite sensitive in China) possible. I am also
extremely grateful to archivists at the Shanghai Municipal Archives, Qingpu District Archives
(near Shanghai), Dongcheng District Archives (Beijing), Shandong Provincial Archives,
Ministry of Justice Archives (Taiwan), and the Israel Defense Forces and State Archives in
Israel (for material in chapter 6). Like all academics, I am highly indebted to the diligence and
expertise of librarians. At the University of Pittsburgh, Zou Xiuying and Zhang Haihui alerted
me to new sources, as did Susan Xue and Wu Yifeng at the Center for Chinese Studies Library
at UC Berkeley and Song Yongyi and Ye Yunshan at Dickinson College. A special note of
thanks goes to Ayelet Harel, my research assistant for two years in Israel, who became a
versatile and intrepid researcher in her own right, as well as to student researchers at
Dickinson College: Kim Gabriel, Devi Bengfort, Micah Hostetter, and Caitlin Steirman. As a
visiting scholar at Dickinson College for two semesters, Professor Fei Changkang from the
Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences helped me puzzle through many hard-to-decipher texts
from rural China. I owe a special thanks to my uncle, Bob Rothenberg, for his sharp
proofreading eye when he read the entire manuscript, as well as to Adrienne Su for help with
the title of the book. Of course, as author, I remain solely responsible for error of fact and
interpretation.
As a project that has been in gestation for a long time, I have also benefited from many
formal meetings and informal exchanges with colleagues, some of whom have sacrificed
valuable time and effort to read a chapter or two of the manuscript. I am that much wiser,
thanks to exchanges with Liz Perry, Dave Strand, Kevin O’Brien, Robert Culp, Tim Weston,
Michelle Rivkin-Fish, Mark Frazier, Bill Hurst, Fei Chengkang, Azar Gat, Yossi Shain, Gil
Merom, Yoav Peled, Xia Guomei, Chen Yung-fa, Shen Guoming, Stephan Haggard, Stephan
MacKinnon, Matt Sommer, Woody Goldberg, Tia Thornton, Andy Rudelevige, Doug Stuart,
Mark Ruhl, Russ Bova, Harry Pohlman, Rae Yang, Ann Hill, and Zhou Minglang. Audiences at
Dickinson College, the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA Corp.), University of Pittsburgh,
University of Washington, Tel Aviv University, University of Michigan, University of
Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Columbia University, National Taiwan University, the