China Buys Loyalty

[peterd]

October 14, 2013: China recently increased payments (pensions and death benefits) for former soldiers and their families. These payments are going up about 15 percent to about a million recipients. These are not pensions for career military personnel who retire but payments to soldiers who have been downsized in the last decade, or have been crippled during military service or families of those who were killed during wartime. Most of the “war death” incidents are from the 1970s, but some military personnel killed on duty since then have been declared “war dead” in order to take care of families and reward and honor the sacrifice. This, as well as payments to disabled soldiers is a combination of good public relations, a boost for morale of all troops and another inducement for young people to join. There are sometimes conditions attached to these payments, the main one being that if a downsized soldier came from a rural village you can only get paid if you return to live in the countryside (and not move to the booming and overcrowded cities). Currently China spends $4.9 billion a year on these payments, which vary from under a thousand dollars a year to over$7,000 a year per recipient. That’s a significant amount of cash for many Chinese and it gives a lot of people one less grudge against their communist police state government.

www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmoral/articles/20131014.aspx