Abstract
Policing in China has undergone tremendous change during the economic transformation of the past three decades. This paper describes the plural policing bodies that have existed during pre- and post-reform periods in China. In the pre-reform period the policing bodies were generally public in nature with the public security police playing an important role in providing professional guidance to the other policing bodies. In the post-reform period, there has been a transition from a monopoly of public policing to an integration of public/private policing, with the public security police still playing a leading role in the policing network. Apart from the emergence of private policing (the security service industry), there is also a trend towards privatizing some previously public policing bodies in line with the movement toward strengthening the rule of law and towards privatization in general.
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Notes
Dutton discussed the revival of the mass-line policing structures in the market economy and argued that “the mass line in security has become one vast network of tiny little workshops that train cadres to think in terms of the market, the contractual relation, and the monetary reward” ([7, p197]).
Public police emerged in the late Qing period around 1900.
Paramilitary policing units of Communist China date back to the 1930s [41].
“Public service units” (shiye danwei) are nonproduction and nonprofit work units. They include scientific research institutions, educational institutions, governmental-sanctioned social and professional organizations (e.g. the Consumer Rights Association), health services, cultural organizations, and athletic organizations.
Articles 13–15 of the Ordinance set the criteria for “key safety and protection units” and the specific requirements for maintaining social order in those units.
The number of recorded criminal cases in 1978 and 2006 is 535, 698 and 4, 653,265 respectively, at a rate of 56/100,000 and 354/100,000 [63, pp100-101].
Personal communication with a police friend.
Personal communication with another police friend. One should exercise caution in interpreting official statistics on police to population ratios.
Under a command economy, essential economical elements such as production, distribution, and investment or accumulation of capital were all done through state planning (via the central planning authority the Economic Planning Commission in the State Council), in contrast to through the invisible hand of the market in a market economy. The basis of the socialist economic system is socialist public ownership of the means of production, including ownership by the whole people and collective ownership. The state economy of public ownership was the leading force in the national economy.
At the time Mr. Zhang was chief of the internal safety and protection office, Shekou Public Security Sub-Bureau, Shenzhen.
In China the old popular saying of “big public security police, small people’s courts and negligible people’s procuracy” describes the overwhelmingly dominant role played by the public security police in the criminal justice system.
Here we see a convergence with “professional police hegemony” as advanced by Johnston and Shearing [21].
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Dr Susan Trevaskes, Dr Alison Wakefield and two anonymous referees for comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Zhong, L.Y., Grabosky, P.N. The pluralization of policing and the rise of private policing in China. Crime Law Soc Change 52, 433–455 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-009-9205-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-009-9205-1