China’s 57 million military veterans in line for better support with new dedicated civil service ranks

China is for the first time training public officials to serve ex-service personnel, as permanent civil servants under the Ministry of Veterans Affairs
Six pilot zones have held training and graduation ceremonies for new team of officials tasked with managing vast network of veterans’ service centres

China’s military

William Zheng

Published: 7:00pm, 21 Jul 2023

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China has identified six pilot zones to train thousands of veterans affairs specialists – a new public service position created to help the country’s 57 million retired military personnel find jobs and better livelihood support.

This is the first time that China is training public officials to cater specifically to ex-service personnel. Working under the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, the specialists will be permanent civil servants tasked with managing the vast network of veterans’ service centres countrywide.

The pilot zones include the city of Ordos in China’s northern Inner Mongolia autonomous region, as well as Shanghai’s Pudong district, Hangzhou in Zhejiang province and Quanzhou in Fujian province to the east. The remaining two are Guiyang in southwestern Guizhou province and Wuzhong in northwestern Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

All six held training and graduation ceremonies for the first batch of veterans affairs specialists in recent weeks, online posts by local government agencies said.

Addressing the programme’s launch ceremony in Ordos on July 8, veterans affairs vice-minister Ma Feixiong said the graduating pilot team would offer “an innovative way to promote the efficiency of the service for veterans’ support”.

“It answers the practical needs of improving the ability and quality of grass-roots staff and [will] stabilise and expand the workforce. It will definitely provide effective assistance to promote the high-quality development of veterans’ work,” Ma was quoted as saying by local media.

The Ministry of Veterans Affairs was set up in April 2018, following a number of protests by ex-military personnel over retirement benefits and perceived poor treatment of demobilised troops. These included demonstrations in Beijing in late 2016 and early 2017 by thousands of veterans, most of whom had fought in Vietnam in 1979 – China’s last major foreign military operation.

According to the ministry, there were about 110,000 members of staff and more than 970,000 full-time and part-time contract workers serving in over 624,000 local veterans’ service centres as of the end of last year.

The centres keep track of veterans within their jurisdictions, provide policy consultation, hear out their grievances and help them with resettlement, finding new jobs and supporting their business ventures.

With the veterans affairs specialist position now under the ministry payroll, many of the contract workers, who are veterans themselves, would have a good chance to become full-time government employees.

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The millions of retired soldiers are also a vast manpower reserve for the Chinese military in case of war. Beijing has pledged to improve veterans’ benefits in the latest five-year plan of 2021-25, amid what it sees as an increasingly hostile international environment.

The Ministry of Veterans Affairs had helped more than 2.6 million ex-service personnel find jobs, officials told a press conference marking its five-year anniversary in April. They also said 8.5 billion yuan (US$1.19 billion) had been released to help 38.49 million veterans in need in the last three years.

It had also worked with the Ministry of Education to bring over 1 million retired soldiers back to degree and diploma programmes since 2019, with exemptions from entrance exams. Over 20,000 of them had then enrolled for master’s programmes. A total of 270,000 soldiers who postponed their studies to join military service had also returned to school to complete their courses, the veterans affairs ministry said.

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