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CHINA has established elite police squads equipped with armoured vehicles
and helicopters under orders to quell riots in a country where a protest erupts
every seven minutes.
The squads are to be stationed in 36 cities, but the largest deployments are in
Beijing and Shanghai as the Communist Party asserts its hold on power and gears
up for the 2008 Olympic Games.
The latest team was inaugurated this week in the city of Zhengzhou, in central
Henan province, China’s most heavily populated, with more than a hundred
million people. More people sue the Government in Henan than in any other region.
People are becoming bolder in voicing their grievances in a society in which
economic liberalisation has created a yawning gap between urban rich and rural
poor, and under an authoritarian system that offers numerous opportunities for
officials to get rich through corruption.
Officials said that the squads of 600 men had undergone training to battle
terrorism, crush riots and respond to other emergencies. The men, the elite
of the police force, have acquired skills such as survival techniques and fighting
in hostile environments.
In recent years, popular protests have surged in China over disputes ranging
from land rights to pensions, the environment and corruption. Several disturbances
have turned violent when local governments have ordered in police or armed men.
Zhou Yongkang, the Public Security Minister, said recently that the number of
mass protests across China soared to more than 74,000 last year, with 3.76 million
people taking part, up from 10,000 incidents a decade ago.
The authorities are particularly keen to avoid trouble during the Games, a
showpiece that is seen as a coming-out party for an emerging superpower. In
the 1990s sporadic bombings in the capital were blamed on members of the Muslim
Uighur minority from the far western Xinjiang region that borders the Central
Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Several particularly
violent riots have broken out in Xinjiang among Uighurs demanding an independent
state of East Turkestan.
The task of suppressing unrest in China has traditionally been assigned to
the million-strong People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force set up
in 1983 to relieve the military of responsibility for internal security.
Acknowledging the problem of rising unrest, a vice-minister said last month
that violent demonstrations were inevitable, given economic changes, and said
that they were a sign of growing democracy.
Zhou Xiaozhen, a professor of sociology at People’s University in Beijing,
questioned the use of force. He said: “I believe that when you save a
plant, you should save the plant, not the leaves and the trunk. I question whether
this way the Government can even cure the leaves.”
He urged greater attention to narrowing the gulf between rich and poor rather
than deploying expensive armoured cars. He said: “The gap between rich
and poor, urban and rural, is widening and this provides the earth for crimes
to grow from. The illness should be cured from the roots.”
This week the Government ordered courts to stop hearing cases over land disputes
and forcible demolition brought by disgruntled victims of eviction. Litigants
will be referred to relevant government departments for arbitration and only
if property owners are still unhappy will they be allowed to file a lawsuit.
Demolitions do not have to stop during litigation if compensation or relocation
has been offered to occupants.