[...C]hengguan officers have become, in many ways, the face of the government’s authoritarian rule — especially among China’s hundreds of millions of lower-class migrant workers, who are increasingly expressing their anger and disillusionment with protests and violence.

[...]Although the government appears keenly aware of the anger — acknowledging it in speeches, policies and training programs for new officials — it has also seemed hesitant to scale back its use of chengguan officers in particular or their tactics, seeing them as a grass-roots-level bulwark for its massive security apparatus.

[...]Chengguans were created in 1997 as a low-level urban security force separate from police that dealt with noncriminal administrative concerns such as noise control, parking and sanitation.

[...]Unlike police, the city enforcers have no legal authority to detain vendors, but they often do so anyway. Vendors say harassment and beatings are common. Many vendors also report having their goods confiscated and returned only if they pay a seemingly arbitrary price, leading to widespread accusations of corruption.

Over the past month, abusive chengguan have frequently been in the spotlight: photos of a March 6 scuffle between an officer and a fruit vendor in Guangzhou circulated widely on weibo, and last Monday, authorities in Yunnan province offered public apology for the beating of a blind homeless man. Recent counterattacks against chengguan have also been documented: on March 16 an official in Hubei province was bludgeoned to death by an illegal construction worker, and a day later a Guangzhou street vendor stabbed an official seven times.

While some vendors are using violence to guard against chengguan, the Global Times reports from a different angle – the ingenuity being bred by the “cat and mouse game” between street vendor and ambiguously empowered officials:

My favorite fruit guy is Xiao Zhao, whose jerry-rigged little grey van stands out in the crowd. The other vendors sell from the back of motorized flatbed tricycles, but my guy opens the back hatch and slides out a built-in table.

[...] His ingenious contraption, which shows off his good imagination and carpentry skills, is actually an escape mechanism.

[...]The micro-merchants are constantly on the lookout for a white chengguan pickup truck.

As soon as their prowling white truck, with flashing, rooftop emergency lights, is spotted, the vendors erupt in a well-rehearsed fire drill.

The side gate goes up, the umbrella comes down, a tarp is flung over the produce, and they scatter in all directions.

For more on chengguan or street vendors, see prior CDT coverage.

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The original film, based on the novel of the same name, spanned 172-minutes long for European and American markets but was cut to just 137 for its mainland version, according to the film’s directors.

[…] “Although the mainland version is a bit constrained, [we] fully believe in the regulator’s editing standards,” said Cloud Atlas co-director Tom Tykwer, who was in Beijing on Tuesday to promote the movie ahead of its January 31 release.

[…] Material deleted mainly comprised of love scenes, gory sequences and nudity. A number of same-sex love scenes between actors Ben Whishaw and James D’Arcy were also cut from the film due to the Sarft’s strict ban on homosexual content.

Details of changes to the latest Bond film, Skyfall, also emerged last week following its belated Beijing premiere. While The Atlantic’s Matt Schiavenza dismissed the edits as “little more than a government tailoring a popular film for its audience“, Xinhua reported that the altered film had prompted calls for a less capricious censorship process:

Shi Chuan, a professor from Shanghai University’s school of film & TV arts and technology, proposed the enaction of relevant laws and the establishment of norms for movie censors to follow.

[…] “Movie regulators should respect the producers’ original ideas, rather than chopping scenes arbitrarily,” Shi said.

However, he said that he believes the censorship system is necessary for China’s film industry.

[…] During an annual session of China’s political advisory body held in March last year, Yin Li, vice chairman of the China Film Association, said Chinese film-making faces too many restrictions regarding sensitive topics such as public security, diplomacy, ethnic minorities and religion.

“I hope China can offer more freedom to film-makers so that a more favorable environment can be created for the country’s movie industry,” Yin said.

While money from the mainland has attracted attention recently, SCMP’s Vivienne Chow wrote that Cloud Atlas‘ financing suggests a role for Hong Kong in the global film industry:

According to veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Philip Lee, an executive producer of Cloud Atlas responsible for its fund-raising in Asia, Hong Kong has a unique edge in film financing, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Hong Kong is the Asian financial centre and has a long history in filmmaking. With more collaboration with foreign projects or companies, knowing how to find the right match is very important, and Hong Kong has the expertise,” says Lee, who served as an associate producer of the international hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and a line producer for Batman film The Dark Knight during its filming in Hong Kong.

[…] “The mainland certainly has capital, but can they find the right people? Not necessarily. Hong Kong can be more active in bridging this gap,” [Media Asia's head of distribution Ricky Tse Chi-keung] says.

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“I was deeply humiliated because I was not required to provide any hukou document when I was applying for visas to France and the United States after 9/11,” Yu told the Sunday Morning Post.

[…] The incident comes amid growing calls to reform the system from inside and outside the government. Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun yesterday ordered local police chiefs, who handle routine hukou matters, to co-operate with other agencies in reforming the system, state television reported.

[…] “I demand that the British government stop requiring Chinese applicants to provide a hukou document, which is a discriminatory system created under the planned economic era of the last century and conflicts with today’s common international values,” Yu wrote in an open letter to the British government.

The hukou is not normally required for U.K. visas: Chan implies that the professor’s customarily “tattered” clothing may have prompted the additional demand. Yu also spoke to Global Times about the incident. From Zhang Wen:

“I’ll never provide my hukou, even if it’s at the cost of not being able to attend the conference in the UK. It’s my principle,” said Yu.

[…] “What made me even angrier is that when I said I would never show them the hukou, an agent standing at the next counter immediately told me that he could help me to get the visa without me providing it,” Yu said.

“It’s blackmail. The agent is obviously familiar with the embassy employees,” he said.

[…] Liu Guofu, an expert on immigration law from Beijing Institute of Technology said an embassy can ask for any supporting documentation it likes.

For more on China’s hukou system, see two recent conversations with Tom Miller, author of China’s Urban Billion, via CDT.

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An special police officer in Taiyuan.

Update: Additional photos added at end of article.

Mainland media outlet Hexun reports a display of police might in Taiyuan, Shanxi in preparation for this October’s leadership transition:

On the evening of August 22, 2012, the Taiyuan Municipal Police Department in Shanxi Province launched a “provincial capital public security and public incident prevention and control combined patrol demonstration” at the Taiyuan Coal Business Center.

The combined patrol officially started at 8 p.m. Taiyuan’s armed police, patrol police, special police, traffic police and all other divisions and units formed an all-weather, all-terrain 103-unit strong “golden shield” patrol squad. This high-density force has been set up to patrol public incident prevention and control activities and police checkpoints, as well to as aid the masses. It will maintain public order in Taiyuan during the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th session of the National People’s Congress.

2012年8月22日晚，山西省太原市公安局“省城治安防控联合巡逻启动仪式”在太原煤炭交易中心举行。

此次联合巡逻从8月22日晚20时正式开始，太原市的武警、巡警、特警、交警、各公安分局和派出所共同组成103支“金盾”巡逻分队，开展全天候、全方位、高密度的联勤联动、巡逻防控、设卡盘查和救助群众，保障党的“十八大”期间的太原社会治安稳定。

During the National People’s Congress, new leaders will ascend to the Politburo Standing Committee, the presidency and premiership. Xi Jinping is expected to take over from Hu Jintao as president and general secretary of the Communist Party. A reduction in the number of Standing Committee members from nine to seven is also anticipated. Authorities are particularly wary of unrest during the Congress in the wake of the Bo Xilai scandal.

Some of the images from this demonstration bear eery resemblance to Tiananmen. From Xinhua News Agency:

Read more about the upcoming leadership transition from CDT.

Translation by Harriet Xu.

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While the world bites its nails over China’s military growth, China itself has more internal concerns. 2012 marks the second year since national spending on “public security” has surpassed that of the military. This year’s budget for jails, courts, police and various security and para-military forces is 701.8 billion yuan (US$110 bn), an 11.5% increase from 2011. By contrast, military spending went up 11.2% to 670 billion yuan (US$105 bn).

Disaster relief and border patrol are just part of public security’s purview. Police and para-military are often called in to control “mass incidents,” public gatherings and protests. Armed police were dispatched to Lhasa after two monks self-immolated on May 27. Others have gone to the scene of riots in Zhongshan and Zuotan, Guangdong.

The star of this year’s China Police Expo at the Beijing International Convention Center was a 7.62 mm Gatling machine gun built by the Chongqing Jianshe Industry Group (pictured above). It can fire anywhere from 2500 to 6000 rounds per minute. To some Chinese netizens, it’s a terrifying icon of public security. “This is a f***ing policeman’s machine gun,” writes the blog Fantastic Record. Weibo user WildhouseNEWS asks, “Who are the police going to mow down with this gun? The American imperialists or the Japanese devils? Who are they selling this thing to?”

It’s not clear which foreign police forces put their money on this gun, but netizens suspect it gets plenty of use at home. It looks like China is at war with itself.

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 The Ministry of Public Security said in a statement Sunday that 56-year-old Zhang Yongming was arrested by police in Yunnan province on murder charges.

It said Zhang is suspected of attacking male victims who were walking alone on a quiet road near his home in Jinning county.

The case is believed to be related to media reports this past week that at least eight young people had gone missing in the county.

The reports sparked a public outcry because they cited relatives of the missing as saying that police ignored their pleas for help and prevented them from contacting the media.

Other reports are calling the suspect the ‘cannibal monster.’ The Daily Telegraph adds:

 It said Zhang, a loner who never talked to his neighbours, had previously served almost 20 years in jail for murder and was known in the village as the “cannibal monster”.

And it quoted residents as saying they had seen green plastic bags hanging from his home, with what appeared to be white bones protruding from the top.

Hong Kong newspaper The Standard said police discovered human eyeballs preserved inside wine bottles – “like snake wine” – and pieces of what appeared to be human flesh hanging up to dry when they entered Zhang’s home.

Police feared that Zhang had fed human flesh to his three dogs, while selling other parts on the market, calling it “ostrich meat”, according to The Standard.

According to AFP, reports on nonpolitical crimes hardly face restrictions, but cannibalism seems to be a sensitive subject:

 Almost all last week’s reports on the grisly case — which made headlines around the world — were later removed from Chinese websites and online searches for the words “missing in Yunnan” were also blocked.

Cannibalism is a particularly sensitive subject in China, where it was practised as a survival tactic during periods of mass starvation, for example in the wake of a failed industrialisation drive launched in the late 1950s.

“A large amount of physical evidence and DNA comparisons show that Zhang Yongming from Nanmen village, Jinning county, killed the 11 males,” Sunday’s report said, citing the ministry of public security.

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“Leaders at a higher level of local government summoned me for talks. They said they would come to the village as they know I will not leave. But I told them that until they release Xue’s body, and the four other villagers held in custody, and to give back our land, there can be no talks,” said village representative Lin Zuluan.

The Telegraph also noted that for the first time since the siege began last week, villagers prepared to take their grievances outside of Wukan in a march on the nearby administrative town of Lufeng:

During another day of protests and marches, Wukan village representative Lin Zulian addressed a crowd of more than 6,000, pledging to fight with their lives against the corrupt system which has robbed them of their coastal land and of their village leader, Xue Jinbo.

“We give the local government and police five days to hand back Xue’s body. If not, we shall climb over our barricades and march on the [Lufeng] town hall to try and get his remains,” said Mr Lin.

…

On Saturday the villagers staged a practice march around the small maze of streets after another emotional rally, the sixth in as many days, which included a memorial for Xue.

Another village representative, Yang Semao, confirmed the villagers’ resolve to march on Wednesday and not back down if their demands continue to go unanswered. He told Reuters that they do not believe the government would respond to their march with an armed crackdown:

“Parents can’t harm their children,” he told Reuters. “The central government should use Wukan as an example to solve all the land grab disputes.

“If they don’t meet our requests, the country will be in danger. The rich-poor gap has been widening. Look at how our land has been taken by corrupt officials.”

The local authorities strengthened the armed blockade around Wukan late last week, and continue to try and starve the villagers into defecting (some have already done so), though residents have managed to smuggle supplies into the village and The New York Times observed that shops appear fully stocked. And despite whispers of an impending crackdown, The Financial Times reported Sunday that villagers had formed their own administration to govern themselves completely outside of the state’s control:

Villagers pitch in and are assigned tasks by the temporary village committee that has replaced the Communist officials who fled after being accused of corruption and misrule three months ago.

Some guard the village perimeter, alert for any sign of a crackdown, while others organize food and logistics or coordinate the mass rallies that have become a daily occurrence since one of the village leaders died in police custody on December 11.

More and more members of the foreign media have made their way into Wukan since last week, and a makeshift foreign media center has been established. The Financial Times posted a video from within Wukan, the latest in a series of overviews put online by the foreign press, which includes interviews with “openly defiant” villagers. Tom Lasseter, the Beijing Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers who evaded the roadblock and has been Tweeting and reporting from within Wukan since last Thursday, posted a photo of a notice distributed by the villagers urging the members of the media to use positive reports and stressing that “we are not in revolt, we support the Communist Party.” His report on Sunday speculated how long the villagers could push forward and maintain their enthusiam with no sign of real compromise from the ousted authorities.

The China Media Project observed that while a search today for “Wukan” in a database of Chinese-language newspapers returned zero results from mainland publications (of which about 200+ would be captured by the database in question), offshore Chinese-language press has covered the event and information has still crept past mainland censors and into the Chinese blogosphere:

While there seems to be no mainstream media coverage inside China today of the Wukan story, news is flittering across domestic microblogs. Searches for “Wukan” remain blocked on Sina Weibo, bringing up a notice that results cannot be shown “according to Chinese laws and regulations.”

…

However, searches for “Shanwei,” which were blocked late last week, are now freed up and reveal plenty of chatter about the situation in Wukan Village, for which a number of new keywords have cropped up, including “W-kan” (W坎), which uses the English letter “W” with the second character in the village’s name, and “Wu-K” (乌K), which combines the character for “wu” with the English letter “K.” Another term being used is the simple “WK.”

The images of armed police surrounding the roadways and waterways into Wukan exemplify the largescale buildup of China’s domestic public security infrastructure under Hu Jintao, a trend which may be one of his ”most far-reaching yet contested legacies,” according to Reuters:

“When we look back, the defining feature of Hu Jintao’s era will be stability preservation. That will be the term through which his era is remembered. It will be his legacy,” said Cui Weiping, a 55-year-old dissident-writer in Beijing, who lives monitored by a team of security police — another part of the security drive.

“Stability preservation is the party’s defensive response to a society that is growing more fluid and assertive,” said Cui.

“But the system can’t keep up with social change and public demands. That’s why they’re so anxious despite all the security spending,” she said, adding that she herself has become a prisoner to this push.

“Somebody controls my cell phone, my computer and Internet, when I can step outside and when I must stay in,” Cui said.

Elizabeth Economy writes for The Council on Foreign Relations that the incident has done little to aid Guangdong Party Secretary Wang Yang’s desire, as conveyed by the Chinese state media earlier this year, to “balance maintaining stability and basic rights while helping people to express their needs”:

Eventually the siege will end but the fundamental challenge to Beijing will not. Every year, despite the country’s impressive economic growth, the number of protests grows. By one estimate, Beijing now contends with 180,000 so-called “mass incidents”. The why of these protests is no mystery: the lack of the rule of law, transparency, and official accountability. These are the structural elements that define the country’s political system and allow corruption to flourish. In the Wukan case, the villagers are protesting corruption in both land sales and the electoral process. Whether the protests are over these issues or the environment or defective products, the root cause is the same.

Beijing’s take away from the Wukan protest probably won’t be much more than “It’s time to launch another [ineffective] anti-corruption campaign.” The real take away, however, is that it is time to listen to what Premier Wen Jiabao had to say a few months ago in Dalian: “We must govern the country by law… We need to uphold judicial justice…People’s democratic rights and interests prescribed in the Constitution must be protected. The most important ones are the right to vote and to stay informed about, participate in, and oversee government affairs.” Put more bluntly, if the 5th generation* of Party leaders doesn’t listen to Wen and seize the initiative on political reform, it is looking more and more likely that the Chinese people will.

Sources:

- “Wukan siege: rebel Chinese villagers reject resolution talks” from The Telegraph

- “China’s rebel villagers in Wukan threaten to march on government offices” from The Telegraph

- “Chinese rebel villagers vow march to press complaints” from Reuters

- “Chinese Protesters Seek Return of Villager’s Body” from The New York Times

- “Wukan villagers form own administration” from The Financial Times

- “Defiant mood in village that shook China” from The Financial Times

- “Between jubilation and foreboding in Wukan, China” from McClatchy Newspapers via The Miami Herald

- “Chinese-language coverage of Wukan” from The China Media Project

- “Insight: In China, security drive sows own seeds of unrest” from Reuters

- “Occupy Wukan: China’s 99 Percent” from The Council on Foreign Relations

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The government has blamed Muslim extremists for the July attacks and violent protests in Kashgar, where 80 percent of the population of 600,000 are Uighurs, and in another southern Xinjiang city, Hotan.

Recently it sent its elite Snow Leopard Commando unit to patrol the region from a base in Aksu city, roughly halfway between Kashgar and the regional capital of Urumqi, the China Daily said, quoting a spokesman for the Xinjiang People’s Armed Police.

Calls to the Xinjiang government and police were not answered Saturday.

The Snow Leopards, formed in 2002, were charged with securing the 2008 Beijing Olympics and have a mandate to combat terrorism, control riots, dispose of bombs, respond to hijackings and carry out other special tasks, the newspaper said.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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John Garnaut is the China correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age newspapers. He has written for other publications including Caijing magazine, Tempo (Indonesia), The Diplomat (Australia) and the International Herald Tribune.

Recently his coverage has been recognised with a Walkley award for ‘Scoop of the Year’ for breaking the story that Rio Tinto’s Stern Hu had been arrested; the Citigroup award for business journalism ; and a finalist for the Graham Perkins Australian journalist of the year.

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From the start, the plan sounded like public performance art or a prank to emulate the Jasmine Revolution sweeping the Middle East: Anonymous online messages called for rallies at 2 pm Sunday in China’s busiest shopping districts: No angry signs or shouts needed, protesters could participate by “strolling, watching or pretending to pass by.” Organizers thus hoped to turn every shopper into a virtual protester, demanding a government supervised by the people and an end to corruption. Seeing unending protests across the Middle East and North Africa, China-based foreign journalists took the messages seriously. Deeply worried by polls showing people’s unhappiness, Chinese police and security forces sought to nip any such protest in the bud by arresting bloggers and cracking down on foreign media, reports journalist Frank Ching. The tough reaction – combined with recently unveiled Chinese budgets that devote more funds to internal security than external threats – signals a government that doesn’t trust its people or its ability to handle internal disagreements without force.

See also “Psst… Where’s the Revolution?” from Marketplace.

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The praise was for the new five-year economic plan, which contains several progressive environmental policies (listed below) aimed at slowing emissions growth, cutting pollution and switching the focus of development from GDP quantity to sustainable quality.

The criticism was for a sharp rise in public security spending, which for the first time overtook the military budget.

Unease about the possible rise of a police state was further heightened by official threats and harassment of foreign journalists attempting to cover “jasmine” protests in Beijing and Shanghai on Sunday.

Apart from police and reporters, almost nobody has turned up at these demonstrations, but the government is clearly uneasy. The immediate cause of concern for China’s unelected leaders is the spreading wave of pro-democracy unrest in the Middle East.

Longer term, however, there are deeper causes of tension related to environmental stress, notably the rising prices of food, oil and other commodities.

A post on China Dialogue looks at the energy and climate targets in the new five-year-plan:

The 12th Five-Year Plan, which covers the period 2010 to 2015, won’t be formally launched until the end of this week, but the headline figures for energy and climate are clear: a 16% cut in energy intensity; a 17% cut in carbon intensity; and a boost in use of non-fossil fuel energy sources to 11.4% of primary energy consumption (it is currently 8.3%).

Beyond these numbers, what do we know about China’s new development blueprint so far?

Read Premier Wen Jiabao’s full work report delivered over the weekend.

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To be clear, the argument here is not that China is flirting with a revolutionary moment. But this does not mean that this is not an unusually important moment, and a deeply revealing one as well.

At the simplest level, it is hard to understand how a call to protest can be declared a failure if it virtually causes a nation’s entire security apparatus to come out in force and to take extraordinary measures of one kind after another, as has happened in China.

Ever the great builder of walls, China responded to last week’s call for protesters to gather at a McDonalds in central Beijing by erecting barriers around the fast food establishment and deploying sanitation workers to hose down the streets to shoo people away. Watching over the scene were large numbers of policemen, both uniformed and plain-clothed, who didn’t hesitate to use muscle to bundle away suspected foreign correspondents, many of whom were then subjected to interrogations on camera.

[...] On reflection, this might be a good time to take the Chinese authorities at face value. By their actions, they have all but declared this Jasmine moment to be of tremendous importance. By the same token, this is a good time to reconsider the hasty verdict of failure that many attached to this phantom movement.

A baseline objective of peaceful protesters everywhere is to call out their oppressors, to cause them to show their true colors, and to induce overreaction. By these standards at very little cost, whoever is behind the calls for Chinese to “stroll” in designated areas in cities around the country every weekend in silent protest has registered a rousing asymmetric success.

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Despite persistent calls for political reform among the country’s small and embattled group of human rights advocates, most analysts agreed that China faced a smaller risk of street unrest than did Egypt, Libya and Bahrain. Unlike those countries, where oligarchic rule and high unemployment have fed discontent, China’s leaders have largely tamed widespread antipathy through policies that have led to robust economic growth and through selective repression that most Chinese have come to tolerate.

Over the past five years, stability maintenance, known as “weiwen” in Chinese, has become a multiagency juggernaut that relies on a sophisticated menu of Internet censorship, the harassment of blacklisted troublemakers and an industrial complex of paid informants and contractors. The vast bureaucracy extends from the Politiburo Standing Committee’s chief law enforcer, Zhou Yongkang, to neighborhood “safety patrol” volunteers on the lookout for Falun Gong members and low-level clashes that can mushroom into large-scale disturbances.

The party has matched this tight fist with a buildup of mediation techniques and manpower within party organizations and a system of rewards and punishments for bureaucrats who fulfill — or fail to meet — social harmony goals.

The problem, critics say, is that the high-level pressures to achieve stability often force local officials to clamp down on the symptoms of social discontent rather than address the underlying inequities. That feeds a spiral of new abuses and controls. Just as troubling, legal scholars and judges say, is a party drive to prioritize defusing conflict over adjudication by law.

Yu Jianrong, a leading sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has been blogging and traveling the country to warn local officials that the fixation on weiwen fuels government mistrust. “It is tantamount to drinking poison to quench one’s thirst,” he recently wrote in Caixin weekly.

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These days, many looking at China from the outside see its towering economic statistics and assume that this growing wealth isn’t just about money—that it’s about power as well. After all, a country with growth rates in excess of 10 percent per annum that’s now the world’s second-largest economy, the largest holder of foreign reserves, the largest exporter and largest consumer of energy—surely it’s also a geopolitical powerhouse?

But take a look inside the gates, beyond the headline economic figures, and two points emerge that cast doubt on this notion of overwhelming strength.

One is the amount of money that’s being spent on internal security. According to its official budget, China spent about $80 billion on defence in 2009 (although the United States and others would argue that even this massive figure underestimates the true scale). But more remarkably, it spent almost as much—$75 billion—on internal security.

…The second indicator of trouble ahead is the way elite leaders themselves are speaking. Yes, it’s true that Politburo members and their local equivalents fill their public pronouncements with rosy statistics. Like their Maoist and Dengist forebears, they live in a world still infected with Utopianism—things will always get better, the harvests will get bigger, the heaven on earth promised under Marxism (albeit now called Socialism with Chinese characteristics) will be realised one day (even if that day has to be pushed further and further into the future).

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Can you buy stability?

Guangdong’s Lianjiang City thinks it can. Despite financial troubles, the city still put $4.5 million into comprehensive stability maintenance last year—or as much as the past five years combined. This year spending has again been increased to more than $5,500 in per capita public funding, on par with the Pearl River Delta. Lianjiang Municipal Party Secretary Xu Shun said he is willing to spend money to “buy” stability.

Xu pulled out a series of data proving that stability can indeed be bought: this year no mass incidents have occurred in Lianjiang. The number of mass petitions and the number of participants compared to last year are down 58.9 percent and 50.2 percent, respectively. No mass petitions have gone to Zhanjiang and the number of mass petitions continuing to Guangzhou and Beijing have dropped by 58.9 percent and 25 percent, respectively. Liang Wei, a Provincial Standing Committee and Political and Judicial Committee memeber and head of the Public Security Department, said in a recent survey that Lianjiang’s social stabilization was “big on investment, intensity and effectiveness.” The comment came as wholehearted inspiration.

Public security uses public funds to catch up with Pearl River Delta

In the first half of the year, the country was stunned by the stabbing of 19 teachers and students in Leizhou City, also of Zhanjiang Prefecture. In response, Lianjiang invested another nearly $1.5 million to install closed-circuit cameras and alarm systems on campuses. An additional one to two security guards were allocated to each school and a special “sever the black hand” prize was established for peaceful campuses, awarding $70 to $450 for the investigation and detection of attacks on teachers and students.

More than $3.2 million was invested in the reclaiming of the Lianjiang City Guesthouse and the establishment of a petition and social stability center. For the timely handling of contradiction among the masses, more than $600,000 was invested in social stability centers for Lianjiang’s 21 surrounding townships, as well as [social stability] work stations for the 382 surrounding villages.

An investment of more than $1.6 million was made in installing a city-wide, all-weather 24 hour video surveillance system on major roads, intersections, key areas and roads leading out of the city. Long Yu, Lianjiang’s municipal public security deputy, said catching up with the Pearl River Delta’s public security spending was a difficult task.

“In the Pearl River Delta it might not be much, but in underdeveloped regions it’s by no means easy,” he said.

The founding of a 340 member social stability “Flying Tiger Squad” is another example of Lianjiang’s “generous spending.” To qualify for joining the squad, which will coordinate with the Public Security Department in patrolling and the handling of sudden incidents, members “must be able to run 400 meters while carrying 100 kilograms on their shoulders.” Xu said because most members of the Flying Tiger Squad are young and have simple societal relationships, they will have no misgivings and carry out their tasks neatly.

“Scoundrels looking for a fight on the street will be scared into obedience at the sight of the Flying Tiger Squad,” Xu said.

Although Lianjiang economic output is number one in Zhanjiang Prefecture, it is still far behind the developed regions of the Pearl River Delta. Why does an underdeveloped county-level city need to pay attention to the maintenance of social stability? Xu gives the inside story.

Just after Xu took his position in October 2008, a murder case that shocked the nation occurred in Lianjiang. Three unidentified people stabbed to death Huang Zhaoluan, the city’s Political Consultative Committee deputy chairman, 30 meters from his home. Many took the occasion to fervently attack Lianjiang’s public security, calling it “rotten to the core.”

Xu openly admitted, with Lianjiang’s west bordering Guangxi Province and east bordering Huazhou City, the regional environment is complex. Security at the time was poor and there were many incidents involving guns.

“The people were not satisfied with the security situation,” Xu said. “And at the same time, society was unstable. No one dared to invest and the economy could not develop. The experience was painful and we decided to take care of security no matter what.”

Xu put forward four areas he was willing to work on: a willingness to spend energy to seek stability; a willingness to spend time to grasp security; a willingness to spend manpower to guarantee security; and a willingness to spend money to buy security.

The first two are easily done. The latter two concern the spending of funds and have generated controversy among officials. Some have said “raising police salary is a good thing, but if you raise it this month, can you raise it next month as well? Are there enough funds? Founding the Flying Tiger Squad and hiring more security guards is good as well. But who is paying them?” Xu’s answer is that security is the No. 1 responsibility, and even if finances are in a worse state, more pressure will still be put on social stability work.

A “whistle soldier” on every street

Even so, financial resources do have a ceiling. In terms of innovating new ideas for social stability, and doing a lot with scarce funds, people in Lianjiang have made tireless efforts.

Lianjiang has a population of 1.6 million, making it top 10 in the country [for population of county-level cities], No. 3 in Guangdong Province, and No. 1 in Zhanjiang Prefecture. Yet there are only 700 policemen, and a police-to-citizen ration of 10,000-to-4, far lower than the national average of 10,000-to-12.

“I was once the police chief in Anpu Township. The township had 130,000 people but only 13 police officers. That’s one person responsible for the safety of 10,000 people,” said Chen Hai, the head of Lianjiang’s public security office.

Increasing the police force in a short period of time isn’t realistic. Only the mobilization of the masses is. Chen Hai said the majority of Lianjiang public safety management has expanded from the public security organ to the masses, increasing the main body to double that of the police force.

The first to be mobilized were the “village officials.” Lianjiang established a “peace prize” awarding $22 and $12 to the village secretary, leader and other officials for the absence of criminal cases, riots, mass petitions and industrial accidents.

“The money isn’t attractive to city officials but it’s very attractive to village officials. Their monthly salary is only a few hundred yuan.”

Lianjiang even formed a group of security information officers, their task being to report leads, incidents and collect information. They are awarded a certain prize when they provide the public security organ with effective information. With a few thousand security information officers operating on the avenues and alleys, every time they meet with a security issue they can report it and get a reward. Over the past two years the city has awarded nearly $370,000 to informants.

In a development community on Lianjiang’s Luozhou Avenue, the reporter saw a group of self-appointed “whistle soldiers.” At every alley someone had been dispatched as the whistle soldier squad leader.  When meeting with a security issue, the squad leader would blow the whistle. At the sound of the whistle others would come in a swarm and take part in a “battle.”

“We had previously made an agreement: Whoever doesn’t spring into action won’t get help when there’s a problem at their home,” said development community resident Wu Hanrong. Since the establishment of the whistle soldiers, incidents of theft clearly decreased.

The “five signature system” is another example. During festivals in the past, the people would organize various traditional activities, causing frequent mass incidents. In response Lianjiang put forward the five signature system. Before organizing a traditional activity, village committee officials, the village secretary, village party members, the heads of families and activity leaders must sign with the social stability center, taking liability for the event. At the occurrence of a mass incident, the irresponsible regulator is investigated. This year no mass incident has occurred during traditional activities.

People’s Congress reps have the final say in the quality of security

The money has been spent, the energy has been invested, and still Lianjiang wants to form into a contingent. At the beginning of this year the city of Lianjiang removed the economically and stylistically troubled director and deputy director of the public security bureau.

Has Lianjiang’s public security gotten better? In March the city had its 354 congressional representatives survey societal security. Those finding fundamental improvement, obvious improvement or some level of improvement accounted for 97.4 percent. Those finding fundamental or obvious improvement accounted for 63.8 percent, up from last year’s 43.4 percent.

Was the survey superficial?

“The representatives voted by secret ballot. They could have done without giving me face. This was a political risk, not something every secretary will do. If the survey results hadn’t been ideal, what would have happened to my reputation? I did it because I was emboldened,” Xu Shuo said.

84-year-old Mai Yimei once held Lianjiang’s Political Consultative Committee chair. He said Lianjiang’s security has indeed seen great improvement.

“Four years ago, while everyone was out of the house, a thief pried my door open with a crowbar. A neighbor saw him and screamed. The thief turned and ran, but not without his crowbar. Now in our community we have whistle soldiers patrolling the streets all day. You can leave your door open without worrying about it. Squad Leader Liu Xuehui was once deputy secretary of Lianjiang’s Commission of Discipline Inspection. Now he’s a whistle soldier squad leader and he’s busier than when he was secretary.”

The improvement of the security situation has made Lianjiang favorable for capital investment. Yuan Chao, National People’s Congress Representative and Superwood Co., Ltd chairman of the board, told the reporter he originally planned to move his corporation to Huizhou. But he’s given up this plan.

“In the past when clients would come to Lianjiang, they would get harassed by ruffians. This hasn’t happened for the last two years.”

In the first half of the year, reported hold-ups and robberies have decreased by 63.7 percent and 30.9 percent, respectively, compared to last year. As security gets better, Lianjiang’s economy has comprehensively improved. In the 2009 scientific development index assessment, Lianjiang took first place among Zhanjiang Prefecture for economic development. The compound financial growth rate among Guangdong’s 67 county-level cities rose from No. 27 to No. 11.

“The facts speak for themselves. You can buy stability,” Xu said.

Read more about residents participating in police surveillance work via CDT.

© Don Weinland for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: crime, informants, public security, social stability
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