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China LAW ENFORCEMENT
An extensive public security system and a variety of
enforcement procedures maintained order in China in 1987. Along
with the courts and procuratorates, the country's judicial and
public security agencies included the Ministry of Public Security
and the Ministry of State Security, with their descending hierarchy
of departments, bureaus, subbureaus, and stations.
Historical Background
However much the public security system may have been
influenced by communist ideology and practice, it remained rooted
directly in the traditional Chinese concept of governmental control
through imposed collective responsibility. Even in the pre-imperial
era, a system was proposed to organize the people into "groups of
families which would be mutually responsible for each other's good
behavior and share each other's punishments." The Qin (221-207
B.C.) and Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) dynasties made use of the
concept, and the Song dynasty (960-1279) institutionalized it on a
nationwide basis in the bao jia (tithing) system. It
entailed the organization of family households into groups of ten,
each unit being organized successively into a larger unit up to the
county level of administration. Each family sent a representative
to the monthly meeting of its unit, and each unit elected a leader
to represent it at the next higher level. Since the head of each
unit was responsible to the next higher level for the conduct of
all members of his unit, the system served as an extension of the
central government. Eventually, each group of families also was
required to furnish men to serve in the militia. Bao jia,
which alternately flourished or languished under later rulers and
usually existed more in theory than in practice, was reinstituted
during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).
During the Qing period, the people's aversion to legalistic
procedures and the rulers' preferences for socially and
collectively imposed sanctions continued. Technically, the
magistrate was to hear even minor criminal cases; but local elders
and village leaders were allowed to handle most disputes, freeing
the magistrate for more important work and saving the government
expense. The people preferred to handle matters in this way,
outside the intimidating court system.
Other practices for maintaining public order in China during
the imperial era included the formation of mutual aid groups of
farm households, which over time came to assume police functions.
In a manner similar to twentieth-century means of ideological
control, the Qing bureaucracy organized mass lectures that stressed
the Confucian principle of obedience. Still another traditional
form of policing was the appointment of censors to investigate
corruption and misconduct up to the highest levels of government.
Doing that job too well cost many censors their lives.
In 1932 Chiang Kai-shek's Guomindang government reinstituted
the bao jia system. In the Guomindang's revised bao
jia system, in addition to the chief, there were two officers
of importance within each 100-family unit. The population officer
maintained the records and reported all births, deaths, marriages,
moves, and unlawful activities to the district office. The bao
jia troop commander headed a self-defense unit and was
responsible for maintaining law and order. In rural China, however,
the local village was generally a self-contained world, and the
peasants remained aloof from distant and higher-ranking centers of
authority.
The Japanese were introduced to the bao jia system on
Taiwan when they assumed control of the island after the
Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), and they found the system highly
suitable for administering occupied areas. They instituted modified
versions of it in north China after 1937. The Japanese imposed
severe restrictions on the population, and the system aided in
taking the census, restricting movement, and conducting spot
checks. Each household had to affix a wooden tablet on the front
door with the names of all inhabitants inscribed. Anyone missing or
not on the list during an inspection by Japanese troops was assumed
to be an insurgent. Since there were not as many Japanese troops in
south China as in the north, the local leaders assisted the
Japanese in administering the areas. They also disseminated propa-
ganda at neighborhood meetings and established self-defense and
youth corps.
The Communists were themselves products of Chinese society, and
when they came to power in 1949 they liberally borrowed from these
historical examples. They extensively organized the population and
maintained the principles of mutual surveillance and mutual
responsibility. They also retained the concept of self-defense
forces. Communist control, however, exceeded that of bao jia
or any other traditional system and extended into virtually every
household. Under communist rule, the family was not considered an
effective control mechanism. To achieve near-total control, a large
number of administrative agencies and social organizations were
established or adapted. Police forces resembling the Soviet police
in organization, power, and activities were organized with the aid
of Soviet advisers.
From 1949 to 1953, the newly established government of the
People's Republic made use of the PLA, militia units made up of
demobilized soldiers and other civilians, the police, and loyal
citizens to put down resistance and establish order. Remnants of
the Guomindang armed forces remained in pockets on the mainland,
and communist efforts to enforce tax laws and agricultural rules
provoked disturbances and riots. Extending responsibility for
public order to include the police, military, and citizenry proved
to be a highly effective arrangement, and the concept was written
into the Common Program that preceded the 1954 state constitution.
The PLA and the militia continued to share responsibility for
internal security and public order under the 1954 state
constitution. The PLA's involvement in internal affairs was most
extensive during the more turbulent period of the Cultural
Revolution
(see The Cultural Revolution Decade, 1966-76
, ch. 1).
Mao Zedong, perceiving that the public security cadres were
protecting precisely the party leaders he wished to purge, directed
youthful Red Guards to crush the police, courts, and procuratorates
as well. The minister of public security, Luo Ruiqing (who
concurrently served as the chief of staff of the PLA), was purged,
soon followed by heads of the courts and procuratorates.
Initially, the military tried to remain uninvolved. But on
Mao's orders, the PLA, which had once been told to support
(actually to acquiesce to) the Red Guards, moved in to quell the
chaos that Mao had inspired. The PLA gradually took over public
security functions by establishing military control committees to
replace the government bureaucracy. Revolutionary committees were
set up as provincial-level and local administrative organs, usually
with a PLA cadre in charge, and order gradually returned. By the
summer of 1968 the Red Guards were being disbanded, and mass trials
were used to punish and intimidate rioters.
With nineteen of China's twenty-nine provincial-level people's
revolutionary committees headed by PLA commanders, the military
again was in charge of administration and security throughout the
country, but it badly needed help from experienced police officers.
A policy of leniency toward most former officials evolved, and some
public security cadres returned to work. The PLA also recruited
inexperienced people to form auxiliary police units. These units
were mass organizations with a variety of names reflecting their
factional orientation. Perhaps the best known unit was the "Attack
with Reason, Defend with Force Corps" named for the militant slogan
of Mao's wife, Jiang Qing. Public security forces were composed
largely of nonprofessionals and lacked the disciplined informant
networks and personnel dossiers previously used to maintain order.
Beginning in 1968, the authorities called upon the PLA to help
remove millions of urban dwellers from the overcrowded cities and
relocate them to the countryside and to transport cashiered
officials to special cadre schools for indoctrination and labor.
The migration to the country mostly involved students and other
youths for whom there were not enough jobs or places in the school
system within the cities. Yet despite the discontent these
campaigns caused, reported crime declined after 1970. Increased
concern over the threat from the Soviet Union in the wake of armed
clashes on the Sino-Soviet border in 1969 forced the PLA gradually
to return to barracks, and control of the country reverted to the
civilian leadership
(see Civil-Military Relations
, ch. 14).
The Beijing-based Central Security Regiment, also known as the
8341 Unit, was an important PLA law enforcement element. It was
responsible over the years for the personal security of Mao Zedong
and other party and state leaders. More than a bodyguard force, it
also operated a nationwide intelligence network to uncover plots
against Mao or any incipient threat to the leadership. The unit
reportedly was deeply involved in undercover activities,
discovering electronic listening devices in Mao's office and
performing surveillance of his rivals. The 8341 Unit participated
in the late 1976 arrest of the Gang of Four, but it reportedly was
deactivated soon after that event.
The militia also participated in maintaining public order in
the 1970s. Their involvement was especially evident in the 1973-76
period. In 1973 the Gang of Four, concerned over the transformation
of the PLA into a more professional, less political, military
force, took control of the urban militia from the PLA and placed it
under local party committees loyal to them. For the next three
years, the urban militia was used extensively to enforce radical
political and social policies. It was the urban militia, along with
the public security forces, that broke up the demonstrations in
Tiananmen Square honoring the memory of Zhou Enlai in April
1976--the event that served as the pretext for the second purge of
Deng Xiaoping
(see The Cultural Revolution Decade, 1966-76
, ch. 1).
In rural areas the militia was more under the control of the PLA.
Data as of July 1987
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