Chinese dissident Jianli Yang has said that disgruntled retired Army veterans and serving China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) cadres, who are hurt by the treatment meted out by the government, can form a formidable force capable of challenging the leadership of Xi Jinping and launch a collective and “armed” anti-regime action.
In an opinion piece, Jianli, son of a former Communist Party leader, said that Beijing, which reels under the fear that the admittance that it had lost troops, that too more in number than its opponent, could lead to such major trouble and domestic unrest, that the very regime of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be put at stake.
“The PLA has long been a key pillar of the CCP’s power. If the sentiments of the serving PLA cadres are hurt and they get together with the millions of disgruntled veterans (which may be facilitated by those within the PLA who are already unhappy with Xi — and there are thousands of them, such as those who were hurt by Xi’s move to separate PLA from commercial activities), they could form a formidable force capable of challenging Xi’s leadership,” Jianli Yang, also the founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China wrote.
“Significantly, the CCP leadership cannot afford to undermine the veterans’ potential to launch a collective and armed anti-regime action. Hence, the continuing incidence of veterans’ protests, despite significant coercive pressure and bureaucratic measures, is a source of intense anxiety for Xi Jinping and the CCP leadership,” he adds.
Citing the recent example of the face-off between Indian and Chinese troops at Galwan Valley, during which both sides suffered casualties but Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian refused to even acknowledge that there were casualties on the Chinese side, Jianli said: “Even a week after the incident, China has refused to publicly admit that there had been casualties on its side, while India paid the last homage to its martyrs with full state honors.”
Jianli is of the opinion that at the root of this fear is the simmering resentment running in the hearts and minds of 57 million veterans of China’s PLA.
He explains that veterans are holding frequent mass protests across China hoping to shame the government into recognizing its obligation towards those who battled along the country’s borders in the past.
“If this is the treatment meted out by the CCP regime to the martyrs of today, imagine the plight of PLA veterans, many of whom had participated in the bloody 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War or the Korean War. They have been holding frequent mass protests across China for years now, hoping to shame the government into recognizing its obligation toward those who battled along the country’s borders in the past,” he says.
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