Domestic critics of the Chinese Communist Party sometimes compare it to a mafia; that was literally the case recently in Harbin, the capital of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. A public request for tips on a criminal syndicate involving Yu Tao, a former deputy chief of the municipal public security bureau in Harbin, went viral after subsequent reporting revealed that the gang was headed by Yu’s wife Zhang Xuxia and his sister Yu Bo. The now-censored report also mentioned that Yu had been chosen as one of the nation’s most outstanding police officers in 1997. Investigators in Jixi, a city nearly 300 miles to the east of Harbin, had been offering a reward of 100,000 yuan for information on the gang, a sum equal to nearly double the annual GDP per capita of Heilongjiang.

The reporting has now been censored due to the embarrassing revelation of continued police corruption amidst an ongoing years-long crackdown on organized crime and Xi Jinping’s stated goal of modernizing China’s police forces. While the original piece was censored, other versions of it still circulate freely on Weibo, where outrage and bitter sarcasm were the dominant response. Below is a selection of Weibo comments chosen by CDT editors:

大造化 ：I hope that the Northeast can rid itself of the scourges of bureaucratism, formalism, and collusion between money and power, and finally start rebuilding its former industrial base.

路遥知马力Emmm : Whoa, the gang leader was the [deputy] head of the public security bureau!

骑驴找马两三回 ：That’s probably just the tip of the iceberg.

zhu在我心中 ：One of the nation’s most outstanding police officers? 

夜神工作狂 ： I fear “The Knockout” is going to become a long-running series. Every season could be based on a true-life story of a criminal family’s rise to power. The past twenty years have created so many stories that need to be told. 

SunShine哥哥哥 ：So what was the point of the “crackdown on organized crime”?

In other police news, local law enforcement agencies have become more suspicious of job applicants with foreign ties. Sylvie Zhuang of The South China Morning Post reports that one Beijing district police force has barred the hiring of those who have spent time abroad: 

The ad says people who have studied, worked or lived outside mainland China for more than six months and whose “experience and political conduct during their time abroad is difficult to investigate” need not apply.

[…] Anyone who has lived beyond the mainland borders for more than six months has also been ruled out for jobs at the Key Information Infrastructure Protection Centre, according to its recruitment ad in April. The center is also under Beijing’s Public Security Bureau and provides technical support to protect the city’s critical information network.

In the southern province of Guangdong, a drug research center under the provincial Public Security Department was advertising for PhD graduates in May. Anyone who has spent more than six months outside the mainland is disqualified from applying.

[…] The National Immigration Administration, which works closely with the police, also took a tough line when advertising for new staff in April – anyone who has spent more than six months beyond the mainland could not apply. Its police service support center, an IT research institute and a service center for immigration affairs were all advertising vacancies. The immigration agency also imposed this restriction last year and in 2022. [Source]