On a Saturday evening a soldier from Xintai, Zhang Qing, felt his tension ease when a photo from home arrived with four words: “All good, don’t worry.” The picture showed a well‑lit room and a newly posted “Glorious Home” New Year print — a small domestic scene delivering a clear signal that the state and local community were shoulder‑to‑shoulder with deployed troops.
That reassurance is the visible end of a deliberately engineered municipal system in Xintai, Shandong, that ties veteran and family support to social stability and military morale. Local authorities and volunteers operate emergency aid channels, routine welfare checks, medical outreach and agricultural help; together these form what officials call a “full‑chain, full‑cycle, whole‑society” care network aimed at removing domestic obstacles to soldiers’ focus on duty.
The municipality quantifies the payoff. Since 2020 Xintai has recorded 1,608 awards of third‑class merit or above for its soldiers, including five first‑class and 49 second‑class citations, and reports 116 households with multiple generations serving in the armed forces. Officials say that since 2018 more than 1,500 struggling veterans and active‑duty families have received help with living and medical needs, and some 8 million yuan in relief has been distributed.
Concrete interventions animate the statistics. When Zhang Qing’s family faced a sudden crisis last year — a brother’s severe illness and the prospect of his mother’s unemployment — the municipal veterans affairs bureau activated emergency assistance, secured disability benefits and social assistance within a week, helped find stable work for the mother and arranged other subsidies. That stability, officials and family members say, allowed Zhang to concentrate on training and to earn a third‑class meritorious citation this year.
Xintai’s outreach extends beyond crisis management to rites, remembrance and day‑to‑day companionship. Volunteer teams of officials, veterans and civilians — 36 small farming support squads — harvest crops for bereaved families and disabled veterans; they have helped recover more than 320 mu of grain. Since 2020 the city has institutionalized a “I will look after the martyr’s parents” program that assigns fixed contact teams to families for regular visits, errands and medical accompaniment, and has arranged free medical checkups for hundreds of parents of decorated servicemen.
The city has also pursued long‑running searches to reconnect martyrs with relatives and ensure dignified burials. A specialised task force using archives, fieldwork and DNA testing has located kin or clarified burial sites for 42 martyrs; the municipal government funds cross‑regional pilgrimages to distant military cemeteries so families may observe rituals without bearing the expense.
These practices are embedded in Xintai’s institutional design: a “problem list, responsibility list, implementation list” mechanism to make sure complaints and requests are tracked to resolution. Since 2021 the municipality reports helping place eight military spouses into civil posts where possible, arranging school enrollments for 170 service children, and paying some 1.9 million yuan in living subsidies to accompanying family members during jobless periods. Officials frame these measures as turning admiration for the military into practical supports that make military service a respected, sustainable profession at the local level.
For an international reader, Xintai’s campaign matters for two reasons. First, it illustrates how the Chinese state uses social policy and civic mobilization to sustain the People’s Liberation Army’s social base and to project a narrative that service is honored and cared for at every stage. Second, it shows how municipal capacity can be marshalled to deliver visible benefits that reinforce political legitimacy in ordinary lives, from the harvest field to the hospital ward.
There are limits and questions. Xintai’s model depends on volunteer labour, municipal budgets and bureaucratic coordination that other jurisdictions may lack; the long‑term fiscal sustainability of expanded subsidies remains untested. Still, by institutionalizing remembrance and daily care, the city has converted cultural deference into an operational support system that both stabilizes families and amplifies the symbolic value of military service.
Xintai’s work is a reminder that civil‑military relations are not shaped only by grand strategy or budgets but by routines of care and commemoration. When a mother’s reassurances can reach a soldier in the field and free him to perform his duties, local governance has done more than deliver benefits — it has woven military service into the fabric of community life.