China draws down their army
Andy11M sends us a link to Bloomberg which reports that China is drawing down the size of their military, and they seem to be doing a better job than the Pentagon. They’re buying out their careerists with payouts of tens of thousands of dollars and promises of pensions up to 80% of their active duty pay.
The Chinese want to put out three hundred thousand troops to reduce their end strength to 2 million soldiers.
“Soldiers have a deterrent and destructive power once they unite to do something together, and they could cause some social stability issues easily,” said Yue Gang, a retired colonel who served in the PLA’s General Staff Department. “Soldiers are less adapted to society because they may not have the skills that the job market wants and not be familiar with workplace culture. And that’s why they need more support from the government.”
Odd that the Chinese would understand the problem better than the US, even odder that they would treat their former military better than the Pentagon and Congress treat US veterans.
Category: Big Pentagon
I’m sure the White House will have some deflect and redirect about this, if they even talk about it at all.
It’ll be interesting to see the FB types disregard when it comes to how their veterans get treated on exit versus ours. “Oh but in China…..”
China only has about 2 million soldiers now.
I feel better already.
Only? LOL
China has a good reason to worry about her troops; one of the recurring fears of their political leaders is that the army -or parts thereof- will rebel.
Gee, you don’t suppose that’s because the Communist Party of China came to power as essentially a warlord faction that rebelled against the Chinese government and won, do you?
Think it could work with bureaucrats? Rather pay them to go away than abuse their powers–and a good number are already retired in place.
The Chinese military swears allegiance to the Communist Party, NOT the country in of itself.
The Pansy in Chief and his administration will seize upon this news and declare it a ‘peace dividend’ of the administration’s foreign policy successes. It will be milked as ‘proof’ that his diplomatic and military programs are wildly successful.
Oh, but, you see, it’s obvious that the Chinese government wants to present a peaceful appearance to the world in general. They have always been peaceniks since the Dawn of Time, haven’t they?
80% of duty pay? What is that? About $120?
I wondered the same so I looked it up. The following is taken from an article of JAN2015:
“Some media estimated that since 2014 when a substantial salary adjustment took place in China’s armed forces, an army lieutenant’s monthly salary is about 3,000 yuan and that of a lieutenant-colonel is 5,000 to 6,000 yuan.”
I couldn’t find anything re enlisted personnel salary. BTW, 3000 yuan converts to about $451, or roughly 15 cents US to each Chinese yuan.
A buyout of tens of thousands of dollars and pension of 80% of base pay sounds to be a really great deal for the military member. I wonder why the Chinese government is being so generous?