Problems With The Current Planned Placement Of Demobilized Army Officers And Solutions

With the deepening of reforms in China, the government dominance in allocating resources gradually gives way to the market dominance. Accordingly, in 2001, the planned placement of demobilized army officers was replaced by the combination of planned placement and independent seeking of employment. Over the past ten years, however, the planned placement remains the mainstream placement. What is more, its conflicts with the market mechanism that dominates China’s human resource allocation and with the administrative reforms are more and more acute. This poses severe challenges to the country, localities and demobilized armies officers. Therefore, research on the problems facing China’s planned placement of demobilized army officers and the solutions not only inspires us on how to address the current problems, but also provides the direction for future work on improving the placement policies. Aiming at optimizing the polices on the placement of demobilized army officers, this paper deploys literature research, historical research, systemic and scientific research and comparative research and so on and builds its research framework. It systematically analyses the problems facing the country, localities and demobilized officers in implementing the policies on planned placement and the causes for those problems. Learning from the experience and practices of the United States and Russia in placing retired soldiers, this paper offers advice on optimizing China’s work in this regard. Research results reveal the major problems facing the current planned placement model as follows:legislative and institutional problems facing the country; local governments faces a mental burden that arises from the conflict between planned placement and local institutional building, and the conflict between their having only one placement way and needing to give proper placement to demobilized army officers; over-valuing bureaucratic careers affects how demobilized army officers choose their employment; qualifications of these officers do not match the requirements of job posts offered by localities; and these officers have a hard time psychologically adjusting themselves to the local employment. Reasons responsible for the above-mentioned problems can be summarized as follows:the legislative and enforcement agencies for the placement of demobilized army officers have innate flaws; the current social security system can hardly free these officers from worries about their living necessities; the current training system does not provide practical and effective re-employment training and targeted psychological counseling. Considering the root cause to the above-mentioned problems and the experience that we learn from the US’s "independent seeking of employment" model and Russia’s "dual-track" model, this paper summarizes three ways to improve our placement. First, we should improve top-level design, strengthen special legislation, and optimize institutional arrangements. The special legislation will facilitate the shift of placement from being policy-based to being law-based and make placement work more authoritative and standardized. Government agencies and civil organizations should be scientifically and rationally set up to ensure the implementation of laws and regulations on the placement. Second, we should ensure that benefits for demobilized army officers are delivered and establish a sound social security system for them. A sound social security and service system that can ensure proper benefits and political status will free the demobilized army officers from worries about their living necessities. When this is achieved, we can push forward with their re-employment in the market. Third, we should adopt an individualized education and training system. We should establish a scientific and effective human resource development system for demobilized army officers. Psychological counseling should be strengthened and the training system improved to serve the re-development of human resources for these officers.