The Politics of Policing in Greater China

Although the scope of policing differs in these four places, the main question for us to answer is how the police forces have been responding to the rapidly changing socio-economic and political circumstances. If police forces can be regarded as the instrument of the states and city-states to maintain law and order, their internal development and responses to external challenges remain the indicators for us to comprehend the dynamic relationships between policing and politics. From a systemic perspective, the People’s Republic of China has a far more paternalistic state than the Republic of China on Taiwan, where the pluralistic and democratic state tolerates a relatively strong political opposition and mass media critical of the government in power. The one-party rule in mainland China is very different from the rotation of political power in Taiwan, where the island republic underwent three rotations of the political party in power: the change from the Kuomintang (KMT) presidential administration to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) led by Chen Shui-bian in 2004, the return of Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT to presidency in 2008, and then the alternation back to the DPP presidency under Tsai Ying-wen in 2016. The gradual democratization of Taiwan in the 1980s and its democratic consolidation since the 1990s have forced the police to adapt to all socio-political transformations. The police in Hong Kong, unlike their counterparts in mainland China and Macao, have experienced democratization since the 1990s. Their adaptation to the socioeconomic and politicized circumstances has become necessary since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region on July 1, 1997.

Overall, the mainland police play a critical role of being the instrument of the ruling regime in China to maintain national security, exert social control, curb terrorism, and fight against cross-border crime. However, police legitimacy in China is relatively problematic, partly due to their controversial exercise of power and partly because of corruption. As such, the police are under tremendous pressure to demonstrate their crime-fighting capability through internal reforms, better coordination with the police at provincial and local levels, and the modernization of policing. The control over cross-border crime is a good indicator of China’s improved coordination and police modernization. Still, enhancing police legitimacy is a huge challenge in mainland China due to its vast size and the variations of police practices in different localities. The Lee Po case in Hong Kong raised an important question of whether the mainland security police might cross the border from the mainland to Hong Kong to “persuade,” if not “kidnap,” Lee back to the mainland. Although Lee insisted that he voluntarily sneaked back to the mainland for investigation, the disappearance of Lee demonstrated the political sensitivity of those who produced books that mixed rumors with partial facts on Chinese politics in Hong Kong. The police force remains the tool of the mainland Chinese Party-state to consolidate its political power and maintain socio-legal order. As such, religious freedom in China is bound to be constrained from the Western perspective. Ultimately, the persistent psyche of the Party-state and of the police force to perpetuate the ruling party’s dominance is the policing context that shapes China’s police operation.

This chapter argues that despite the different policing environment between mainland China and Hong Kong, the policy transfer in policing has occurred from Hong Kong to the mainland. Agents of this policy transfer are mainland police officers and researchers who study the Hong Kong experience and who apply the Hong Kong experience to the mainland setting. As a matter of fact, the mainland police have been learning from the Hong Kong experience mainly in the area of operation. In an attempt to enhance the manpower of the mainland police, private security companies have been legalized while residents’ anti-crime groups have been partially incorporated into the regular police force. The auxiliary police force has become an experiment in some mainland cities, whereas the practice of police handbooks is viewed as a model for the mainland police to emulate. Statistical research and data remain to be improved in the mainland police. A gradual process of Hongkongization of mainland policing has been taking place in China. On the other hand, the mainland police are simultaneously undergoing rapid reforms independent of the influence from Hong Kong. Because of the unique politico-legal environment in China, the mainland police have been implementing various reform measures, such as the persistence in the mass line concept, the adoption of the visitation scheme, the heightened sensitivity toward mass action in politically sensitive places, the heavy emphasis on community policing, the improvement in the quality and quantity of officers and the recognition of the need to reform the recruitment, performance appraisal and training of the police force continuously. The adaptive capacity of the mainland police has become a hallmark of how they have been responding to a challenging, complex, transformative and turbulent policing environment in China.

The increase in cross-border crime in Hong Kong since the 1990s has intensified police cooperation between Hong Kong and mainland China. The transfer of sovereignty in Hong Kong from Britain to China accelerated the pace and widened the scope of mutual police cooperation, especially in the areas of joint anti-crime campaigns, intelligence sharing and operation and evidence collection, as well as mutual exchanges, visits and training. Mainland police have been learning much from their Hong Kong counterparts in all four areas, while the Hong Kong police have also learnt from the mainland’s operations and procedures. In particular, the mainland police have been deeply impressed by the Hong Kong police’s practices of operation in accordance with the comprehensive and detailed Police Order, their use of police handbooks, the review of court cases, the rotation of police officers, and the services of psychological counseling. Moreover, the mainland police have learnt from the Hong Kong police in the area of community policing, especially on how to improve police-public and police-media relations. Finally, the ways in which the Hong Kong police handle social protests and unrest relatively peacefully set a model for mainland police. The mainland authorities have become far more cautious and intelligent in dealing with citizen protests based on the June 1989 Tiananmen experience, especially after they have witnessed how the Hong Kong police have been dealing with street protests, demonstrations and rallies in a relatively peaceful and skillful manner. If Hong Kong can be seen as a tail that wags the mainland Chinese dog, the area of policing has been neglected and it constitutes an important aspect of Hong Kong’s influence on China’s police modernization.

The Hong Kong police force can be seen as a professional and efficient disciplinary force highly adaptive and responsive to the rapidly changing socio-political circumstances. Its responses to the politicization of Hong Kong, the rise of localist politics and protests, the emergence of some home-grown terrorists, and the increase in cross-border crime have demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness in maintaining the law and order in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong police have been operating under a well-established and solid system of internal and external checks and balances on the exercise of police power, including the Complaints Against Police Office, Independent Police Complaints Council, Independent Commission Against Corruption and the mass media. Under these circumstances, the police in Hong Kong can strike a balance between professionalism in their operation and accountability to the public.

The violent confrontations between anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) protestors and the Hong Kong police in December 2005 showed that their interactions generated uncompromising attitudes and escalating activities from both sides. As a result, conflicts between police and protestors became inevitable on the penultimate day of the WTO meeting. On the other hand, various factors at the structural, political/ideological, cultural, contextual and situational levels were at play, creating an environment conducive to violent confrontations. The “flashpoint” or political spark was ignited as the interactions between protestors and police turned violent. While David Waddington’s model provides a very useful framework through which we can better understand the dynamics of the anti-WTO confrontations in Hong Kong, it has neglected the possibility of an interactive bond between protestors and the public. The anti-WTO protestors in Hong Kong acquired the support and earned the sympathy of many Hong Kong people. This public support strengthened the determination of protestors to confront the police, and it became a bargaining chip during the negotiation between the Hong Kong Police Commissioner and the Korean protestors. Although the Police Commissioner refused to make concessions to the Korean farmers’ demand that their protests secured the support of many Hong Kong people, the conditions laid out by the Korean farmers showed that they attempted to utilize public opinion as a bargaining chip. The contextual uniqueness of forging a dynamic relationship between protestors and the public can enrich the analytical framework of Waddington’s flashpoint model. Contextually, the hidden pressure upon the Hong Kong police to handle the protests successfully without intervention from the People’s Liberation Army served to harden their strategies toward protestors who were greatly encouraged by the unexpected support of the Hong Kong public. Situationally, the police lines were broken on December 17, leading to police trepidation that the Convention Centre would risk being “shut down” by protestors. As a result of all these factors, the “disturbance” on December 17 became inevitable.

The police reacted to the Occupy Central Movement (OCM) from September to December 2014 strategically, swiftly and adaptively, combining soft-line with hard-line measures. Objectively speaking, the police became a political sandwich between the OCM supporters and the anti-OCM activists, between the Hong Kong government and protestors and between Beijing and the pro-democracy Hongkongers. As long as none of the Hong Kong people died in the OCM, the police operation could be viewed as successful and peaceful. In anticipation of the occurrence of the OCM, the police training and preparation for the OCM turned out to be useful and significant. Although there were accusations of police-triads linkage, these claims had no evidence. The complexities among triads and the OCM meant that Hong Kong remained highly politically pluralistic but fragmented. Yet, the fragmentation among triad forces made it difficult for some members of the public to discern the important role of the police force, which acted as the defender of the law and order and which stood above all the vested interests in the society. On the other hand, the fragmentation among pro-democracy protestors facilitated the work of the police to maintain social order, for opinion and ideological differences within the pan-democratic camp meant that the OCM was destined to be short-lived, chaotically organized and subject to the changing public opinion. Public opinion was unfavorable to the police at the inception of the OCM, but the chaotic leadership in the OCM and the fragmented nature of pan-democrats later facilitated the transformation of public opinion in support of the police. Radical localists who attacked the Legislative Council building turned out to be the ones discrediting the entire OCM, which was at the early beginning hijacked by the relatively more hard-line student activists. Overall, the wait-out strategy adopted by the Hong Kong government in dealing with the OCM became very successful. The police adopted a wait-and-see attitude until the collapse of the OCM leadership, especially when the court injunctions were granted to the bailiffs in clearing the protest sites in Mongkok and Admiralty.

The Mongkok riot was an expression of anti-governmental, anti-mainlandization and anti-CCP sentiments on the part of some young Hong Kong localists. They were determined to protect the hawkers, who symbolized not only the local cultural heritage but also the working-class citizens who could not afford to invest in the delicious food carts as introduced by the Hong Kong government. While Beijing quickly condemned the localist rioters, the Hong Kong government swiftly labeled the event as a riot. If rioters are defined as anti-governmental activists who resort to violent means to achieve their political ends, the Mongkok incident was definitely a riot as the localist protestors used not only bricks to attack the police but also arson to prevent the police from pursuing them. However, it is ironic to see that while the 1967 riot in Hong Kong was instigated by the pro-Beijing activists, the 2016 Mongkok riot was led by the anti-Beijing localists who had a strong sense of Hong Kong identity. The police handling of the two incidents adopted the similar tactic of suppression. Yet, the origins of the two riots were beyond the control of the police. The 1967 riot was a spillover effect from China’s Cultural Revolution, which stimulated the local leftists and Maoists to determine to oppose the British colonial rule by violent means. The 2016 Mongkok riot stemmed from the political will of some young Hong Kong people to fight against the police which symbolized the unpopular HKSAR leadership, to resist the mainlandization of the HKSAR, to oppose the central government’s political intervention in Hong Kong matters, and to protect the working-class hawkers whose attempt to earn their living was obstructed by the FEHD on the night of the police-localists confrontation.

The three case studies in this chapter show that the mainland Chinese police, including the fire service, had varying responsibilities in the incidents concerned. In the Shenzhen landslide, the police response to the landslide was swift, but the main responsibility came from the Guangming district government, which contracted out the waste management task to Luwei Company that in turn signed a contract with the Yishenglong Company to deal with the construction waste in the industrial park. Public maladministration at the industrial park level had to shoulder the responsibility of the landslide, for the Guangming district administration should have monitored the process of handling waste management. The police role in the Shenzhen landslide appeared to be minimal. However, the degree of police responsibility in the Tianjin port explosion tended to be much higher as the fire service department failed to grasp the serious extent of the dangerous chemicals that were stored in the port area. Again, public maladministration at the level of Tianjin provincial government existed; the lack of supervision and coordination from the customs department and the supervision and safety bureau demonstrated the limited power of the local police. The degree of police responsibility was the greatest in the Shanghai stampede compared with the Shenzhen landslide and the Tianjin explosion. The lack of contingency planning, the absence of crowd control measures and the clumsy response of the police to the Shanghai stampede all illustrated the extent of police maladministration at the level of Shanghai and Huangpu governments. The three case studies displayed a common pattern: public maladministration persisted and brought about the tragedies. While police accountability varied in the three cases, the most serious incident that exposed police maladministration was the Shanghai stampede. Overall, the PRC police can be seen as being responsive to crises quite promptly at the provincial and local levels, but they must take preventive measures together with better coordination, communication and collaboration with other government departments with a view to avoiding other.

The Taiwan police have been swiftly adapting to the changing socio-political circumstances since the 1990s, including the era of democratization in which social and political movements have become a phenomenon challenging not only the law and order but also police power. The police have also been responding to various contingencies rapidly, such as the Kaohsiung prison breakout, the Sunflower movement and the Formosa Fun Coast explosion. In general, the police reactions have shown that they remain efficient and professional, although critics of police power have pointed to the Sunflower movement. Moreover, Taiwan’s prison management remains to be improved so as to prevent another type of Kaohsiung prison breakout from happening. As Taiwan is entering the stage of democratic consolidation in which citizens are fully aware of their civil liberties and political groups are constantly participating in socio-political movements, police power is destined to be questioned and challenged. Still, Taiwan’s rule of law, with its established court system, can handle controversial cases involving civil liberties and police power. How to strike a balance between the protection of civil liberties and the maintenance of law and order will remain a delicate issue in Taiwan in the years to come.

The Macao police have to encounter numerous challenges, including the increasing scope of their work in light of the new territorial waters acquired by Macao, the disciplinary problem of some officers, the changing patterns of domestic crime and cross-border crime, and most importantly, the constant need to enhance their capacity of crime control. Aiming to be an “elitist” force, the Macao police have been responding to internal and external challenges quite rapidly and flexibly. In this aspect, the Macao police have been demonstrating their adaptability to internal and external transformations. It remains to be seen how the Macao police force will continue to meet the new challenges in the era of globalization in which criminal elements and activities are constantly undergoing the parallel processes of dynamic metamorphosis and adaptation.

The studies of policing in Greater China can continue to utilize the combined perspectives adopted in this book—police-politics relations and David Easton’s political system theory—for the sake of exploring the dynamic and complex interactions between the police and politics. The context of policing constantly shapes the content of policing in Greater China. While police reform and modernization are persistent in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, their mutual learning and knowledge transfer have become the hallmarks of police development, reforms and modernization. Although crisis management remains a prominent weakness of policing in Greater China, it is hoped that the police preparedness, capability and responses to crises can and will be improved through persistent knowledge transfer in the coming decades.