The Politics of Military Resettlement in China’s Center-Army-Local Relations

Although post-Mao reforms dismantled most planned recruitment in China, local resettlement of demobilized military cadres has persisted despite its heavy costs to local governments. Drawing on political documents and interviews with government officials, the article argues that maintaining the military resettlement system requires the central government to strike a balance between the conflicting interests of local governments and the military. By maintaining the system, the central government secures the army’s loyalty through the promise of permanent high-ranking posts after demobilization. Simultaneously, the central government, reluctant to bear the primary responsibility for resettlement, shifts it to local governments. To mitigate local government resistance, the central government has granted broad discretion in policy implementation, which has eroded transferred military cadres’ statutory rights and, in turn, sparked protests. The state contains these protests through repression and tactical concessions. By deliberately managing these conflicts under path-dependent constraints, the central government sustains a “negative equilibrium”: an arrangement that is costly and conflict-ridden, yet stable because it minimally satisfies the central government, local governments, and the military.