In what was seemingly a small development late last month, China's Defense Ministry confirmed an ongoing push to embed People’s Armed Force units, or militias, in state-owned enterprises, or SOEs. But China experts tell VOA that there may be more to the ministry’s confirmation than meets the eye.
Some experts say the push could highlight China’s efforts to prepare for a potential conflict over Taiwan. Others see a connection between Chinese authorities’ concerns about social unrest as the economy weakens and a desire for tighter controls over society.
At the Defense Ministry’s once-a-month briefing on Oct. 26, spokesperson Wu Qian said the effort was part of China’s whole-nation approach to national defense and that the militias are available for everything from a large-scale mobilization to the response to a natural disaster.
“‘People’s Armed Force units within state-owned enterprises is a component of the national defense system, it is the party’s armed work department within the enterprises, as well as the government’s recruitment arm within the enterprises,” Wu said.
Wu did not say how many SOEs have recently established units or elaborate on why the issue is coming up again. In late September, Shanghai’s Jiefang Daily and the popular online news site The Paper reported the establishment of a militia in the Shanghai Municipal Investment Group, a Chinese sovereign wealth fund SOE of the Shanghai government, and others.
According to Chinese media, units have been established this year in at least 23 SOEs nationwide, nine of them in Wuhan.
Quashing dissent
The embedding of militias in SOEs and weaving of People’s Armed Forces units into the fabric of society is not new. China’s reliance on militias peaked during the turbulent rule of Mao Zedong when there were more than 30 million militia members nationwide. In the 1980s, when China shifted to focus more on reform and the building of its economy, the numbers began to shrink to around 8 million, according to an article published in Beijing’s Xinjingbao in December 2011, citing Defense Ministry sources.
June Teufel Dreyer, a political scientist and China specialist at the University of Miami, sees the move as an effort to tighten the Chinese Communist Party’s grip over SOEs.
“And to put any potential dissenters on notice that they’re being watched,” Dreyer said.
Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel who also worked as a U.S. diplomat in both East and South Asia, said it’s also worth considering the broader context of Xi Jinping’s efforts to consolidate and tighten control since he took power.
“That control is ultimately dependent on potential or actual use of violence and intimidation,” he noted. “Having these armed force units in SOEs expands and tightens control, and the psychological threat of violence.”
Newsham adds that the establishment of units in SOEs is not the only recent example of Beijing tightening social controls over Chinese and foreigners alike.
China recently expanded its counter-espionage law, which took effect on July 1. In August, the Ministry of State Security called on the public to join authorities in carrying out counter-espionage work opening up channels for the reporting of suspicious activity.
“And it seems like Xi is getting ready for a war; the new ‘units’ in the SOEs help to keep China on a war footing, without any backsliding,” Newsham added.
Growing uncertainty
More than war, some China experts believe the push is largely driven by what is happening at home. Since Xi began his norm-breaking third term in office last year, he’s faced a string of challenges and setbacks.
Last December, China saw nationwide protests over its draconian COVID-19 lockdowns, the scale of which the country has not seen since the Tiananmen and nationwide protests in 1989, which led to a bloody crackdown.
China's economy continues to struggle, and youth unemployment is so high authorities have stopped releasing numbers.
“There are also reports of salary cuts, benefits cuts, and layoffs at state-owned enterprises, that are adding to the brewing socio-economic tension. This can’t help but make authorities feel insecure, said Chinese-American social scientist Cheng Xiaonong.
History repeats itself
Cheng and Wan Runnan, a leading China human rights advocate and founder of Sitong Group, the best-known computer electronics conglomerate in Beijing in the 1980s, recall the role armed force groups played in helping the Communist Party to establish its footing in both rural and urban areas after the party gained power in 1949.
Cracking down on anti-communist rebellions and making sure everyone toed the party line — often through violence — were key features of these groups, they told VOA.
Cheng worked at Beijing reform think tanks in the 1980s before choosing to live in exile in the United States. Wan, labeled by Beijing as one of the key supporters of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, lives in exile in France.
“Sometimes these groups were given guns, other times they used sticks and other tools” against their fellow villagers and fellow factory workers, which could still be done, Cheng said in a phone interview with VOA.
These groups answer to both local governments and military establishments known as military districts or sub-districts that oversee different parts of the country, he added.
The Shanghai Municipal Investment Group’s militia unit, for example, is overseen by the People’s Liberation Army in Shanghai.
Minbing, or the people’s militias, are under the jurisdiction of People’s Armed Force groupings, or renwubu, and are one of three pillars of China’s armed forces, according to China’s national defense law. The other two are the People’s Liberation Army and People’s Armed Police.
These people-soldiers are designed to be embedded in the population, attached to work units and holding regular jobs, according to Chinese military publications.
They are expected “to work together with grassroots organizations to collect intelligence and information, dissolve and/or eliminate security concerns at the budding stage,” according to an essay published on Chinese military affairs under the PLA Daily conglomerate.
“The so-called citizen or worker-militias’ close proximity to fellow workers gives them the ability to closely monitor what their fellow workers are thinking, saying, who their families are, etc., a unique and important asset to authorities in their scheme aimed at controlling the society,” Cheng said.
The role that militias and armed force units play goes beyond just state-owned enterprises.
In China’s Anhui province, east of Wuhan and west of Nanjing and Shanghai, a notice published by Xiaoxian County last week said that the county planned to install a face-recognition system in accordance with developmental needs and that a bid was open for a company to install the system.
That notice, published on the county’s website on Oct. 30, was authored by the county’s People’s Armed Force unit.
Meanwhile, a chapter in Shaanxi province’s archive explained how government-sponsored militias were put to work in a crisis such as the outbreak of nationwide pro-democracy protests in 1989, which led to the June 4 Tiananmen massacre and killings and arrests of suspected activists throughout China.
“During the political unrest over spring and summer of 1989, in order to prevent the problems from getting bigger and deeper, the county’s People’s Armed Forces promptly set up emergency task forces, which in turn set up emergency teams in townships and among factories and businesses, to ensure that life and work remain orderly,” the archived chapter from Shaanxi explained.
