On a cold morning in the mountainous northwest of Guangxi, a county veterans official climbed a winding road to a small hamlet to visit a 66-year-old former soldier who has been blind for more than two decades. The old house clings to the hillside, its paint flaking but its rooms immaculately kept; inside, the veteran greets visitors with the same upright bearing he learned in uniform and the same refrain of self-reliance.
Born in 1959 and enlisted in 1978, he served five years in a border unit where he and comrades hauled heavy radio and radar equipment over rugged terrain without machinery. The memory of three months cutting a 15-kilometre path through rock and thicket remains vivid; the army, he says, taught him responsibility, discipline and the refusal to give up.
After demobilization in 1983 he turned to livestock, buying his first sow with borrowed money and building a modest farm. His sight began failing in 1998 and by 2001 he was certified as fully blind; instead of withdrawing, he adapted—learning to tend pigs by touch and sound and expanding his herd until he became the village’s largest breeder.
Neighbors recount how he learned to read animals by ear: hunger, contentment and illness each produce distinct calls. That heightened sensitivity became his practical advantage and the key to sustaining an enterprise despite disability, age and the hazards of smallholder husbandry.
Hardship returned in 2019 when African swine fever swept through his stock, killing dozens and wiping out savings; the loss was more than 30,000 yuan, a severe blow for a rural household. He borrowed a little money at year’s end, bought a sow and began again, refusing offers to live off welfare because, in his words, ‘‘the government can help for a time but it cannot support you forever.’’
Local officials say county veterans, civil affairs and disability federation staff visit regularly to check on his welfare, and in 2025 the veterans affairs bureau applied for a rural housing-renovation subsidy to replace his dilapidated dwelling, with approval expected in 2026. The case illustrates a familiar pairing in contemporary China: a modest policy safety net combined with the cultural and moral pressure for veterans to display self-sufficiency.
That pairing matters beyond one village. China’s cohort of ageing veterans and disabled rural workers presents long-term demands on local administrations for housing repair, targeted pensions, medical care and livelihood support. Smallholder livelihoods such as pig rearing remain vulnerable to disease, market swings and climate shocks, exposing the limits of a model that relies heavily on individual resilience.
The veteran’s repeated line, ‘‘don’t give the state trouble,’’ is both a personal ethic and a political signal: it underlines the legitimacy that cadres and policies gain from stories of self-reliant beneficiaries, while also masking structural gaps. His soon-to-be rebuilt house will be tangible proof of policy at work, but his survival strategy—skill, neighbors’ help, and a stubborn will—says as much about the social contract in rural China as about the welfare programmes themselves.