I haven't updated my blog much recently, mainly because I have been working in the public security system, in two stints. The first was at a public security bureau, where I worked for more than two weeks; the second was at a police academy, where I received one week of training. These two experiences gave me a deeper understanding of public security work. Although I had also spent some time at a police station before, public security work has indeed undergone tremendous changes in the last decade or so. In the past, at a police station in an underdeveloped area, there were only two or three police incidents a month, all trivial rural matters, and ordinarily it was more about cooperating with the township government on some grassroots governance matters. But during this period of work in public security, I felt enormous pressure. Overall, there are three kinds of pressure.

I. Political Pressure: A Dispatch System That Goes All the Way Down

The first kind of pressure comes from superiors, which everyone habitually calls political pressure. For example, a police station has to receive work instructions from bureau leadership every morning, receive direct orders from the municipal public security bureau every day, and may face one or two dispatches from the provincial public security department every week. In particular, when the director of the municipal public security bureau directly connects with a police station chief during a dispatch meeting about a certain police incident that occurred that day at that station—this kind of pressure is enormous.

In places like the Pearl River Delta, many police stations may handle one or two hundred police incidents a day. In such circumstances, can the station chief know in exhaustive detail what is behind every single police incident? Actually, it is very difficult. But precisely because of this frequent dispatch from superiors, every station chief is forced to review all police incidents of the day after work every day, or rush to the station as early as possible every morning to review all police incidents. But many times the police station chief also has to be on duty 24 hours a day, and he may not really have the time to manage all kinds of police incidents in the entire station. If a superior once asks about a certain matter that occurred in the jurisdiction and you happen to not know about it, then it is very awkward.

Especially for some police response matters that superiors are concerned about. Many times it is not necessarily a very big matter, perhaps not something that could constitute a criminal case; it may be a weak signal that society may later trigger a major conflict or dispute. For example, a fight between husband and wife. This kind of thing was actually very common in our society in the past, and no one treated it as a very important matter. The old logic was that the responding police officer would persuade both sides on the spot, give a certain warning and on-site education, and try to make both sides reconcile. As long as the couple did not have further conflicts or disputes, the scene was controlled, and tempers calmed down, then the matter was over. But the current logic is not like this. The current logic holds that family conflicts and disputes between husband and wife are the type of problem with the highest probability of occurring among homicide cases in our lives. In fact, in all homicide statistics, the proportion of homicides occurring within families ranks at the top. Under such circumstances, any family conflict or dispute may need to be treated as a problem with the potential to develop into an extreme incident, and must be elevated to this height.

But the problem is that for the responding police officer to capture whether a certain husband-and-wife conflict or dispute contains signals that it may further evolve into a violent incident or an individual extreme incident is actually also very difficult. Even though many police stations now have mechanisms: police officers respond at the front, while behind them there is the station chief or deputy station chief, or at least a squadron leader providing remote video guidance. But to be honest, even the guiding personnel find it very difficult to judge whether the scene will later, after the police officers finish responding, or at some point in the future, give rise to new problems. If we include all such cases as targets for future attention, then it actually becomes even harder to operate. A jurisdiction of, say, four or five hundred thousand people, with one or two hundred police incidents a day, could add up to seventy or eighty thousand police incidents a year. But how many people can a police station have? The largest station is only two or three hundred people.

II. Assessment Pressure: An Enforcement Logic Driven by Indicators

Now, according to the police station "two teams and one room" work reform, there is one case-handling team, one community police officer team, and one comprehensive command room. The most troublesome is the case-handling team, because a large number of ordinary criminal cases and a large number of public security cases are actually handled by police stations. Of course, there is also a certain guarantee in the institutional mechanism, which is to try to ensure that professional and complex criminal cases are definitely handled by the criminal investigation brigade and the economic crime investigation brigade. But the problem is that in reality many public security bureaus are also understaffed in criminal investigation and economic crime investigation. For example, if the municipal bureau takes on a major case, a large number of police officers from the criminal investigation and economic crime investigation departments of county-level public security bureaus will be transferred by the municipal bureau to handle such major cases. There are also corruption cases, where discipline inspection and supervision commissions also tend to transfer public security police officers to participate in case handling. Under such circumstances, many county-level public security bureaus' criminal investigation and economic crime investigation departments are not very capable of handling so many cases. Therefore, in fact, some types of cases that were originally distinguished institutionally, and originally hoped to be handled by various brigades, are actually handed over to police stations.

There are also some technical handling methods here. For example, with fraud, we know that fraud and contract fraud are clearly two types of cases. One type of fraud is an ordinary criminal case, with the key point being to find the criminal suspect and then investigate around whether the facts of fraud exist. Contract fraud is different; contract fraud is a purely economic crime case, very different from ordinary criminal cases. So at this time, if a victim reports contract fraud, many times at the level of a police station or sub-bureau, there is a tendency to first file it as a fraud case and have the police station investigate it. If the police station later discovers that it may be contract fraud, then it is transferred. In this kind of situation, it is also possible that to a certain extent the burden on police stations is indeed increased.

III. Cultural Conflict: The Tension Between the Rule of Law and Non-Legal Means

Police stations are actually at the forefront of the rule of law and the governance of the country by non-legal means. On the one hand, we emphasize the rule of law, and police stations must handle all kinds of cases and respond to police incidents strictly in accordance with the law. But the problem is that the matters they face are bizarre and varied, and many are not problems that can be solved by law. For example, with upstairs-downstairs noise, how do you handle it strictly according to legal provisions? If handled strictly according to legal provisions, then this is a civil litigation issue between two parties. But can civil litigation solve this kind of problem? There is an elderly couple downstairs and a newlywed couple with a child upstairs. Their daily schedules are inherently different, and conflict is inevitable. Add to that the fact that floor slabs are so thin now—can the law solve this? The law cannot say to make the floor thicker. And you cannot fail to respond to such a police call; what if a conflict between the two sides leads to casualties? In practice, many times this can only be solved by the personal ability of the responding police officer.

In fact, if we look at China's entire governance model, we will find that law is only the tip of the iceberg, and below this iceberg there is a large amount of traditional habits, customs, and morality, or non-legal norms. For example, everyone's daily schedule—is this regulated by law? Not at all. The vast majority of us actually rarely truly come into contact with the law in daily life. Most people's daily behavior operates according to a set of humanity's own logic, or a logic endowed by culture. For example, when someone has a birthday and you give a red envelope—how does the law regulate this? These things all fall within the category of what is commonly called culture or morality, or people's spontaneous norms of behavior, and the law does not intervene at all. Only when behavior may trigger conflicts with other rights is it possible to say that law is involved. But people today often encounter the law inadvertently. For example, while walking on the road, I suddenly bump into someone else. This was originally a natural act, just because the road was dark or the flow of people was heavy, and a collision was unavoidable. Then you immediately say this should be solved by law—that is actually wrong too. Like the incident a while ago where a four-year-old boy accidentally touched a woman's buttocks—how can you say this should be solved by law? This is a matter of social common sense. But unfortunately, public security organs, especially police stations, are now at the forefront of handling this kind of matter.

IV. The Predicaments of Various Police Types

Traffic Police: Death Data That Is Only Done and Not Spoken Of

What everyone usually feels most about traffic police is disorderly parking and weaving of electric bikes, problems with ground markings and signs, traffic light settings, parking fines, and muddling through in traffic accident handling, and so on. The most core indicator in traffic police assessments is the number of road traffic accident deaths, or the mortality rate calculated proportionally per 100,000 traffic participants. This figure has long been relatively obscure in our country. Since around 2005, official data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that the number of traffic accident deaths in mainland China has long hovered around 50,000. But as official data, this number cannot reflect the tremendous changes in Chinese society over these 20 years. Because during the same period, almost all other countries showed sharp contrasts or fluctuations in this indicator. For example, South Korea once had the highest traffic accident mortality rate among OECD countries. In recent years, through a nationwide campaign to "reduce traffic accident mortality to zero," supported by countless measures, it has brought this figure down to a level almost comparable to leading developed countries. Japan and Germany have also invested heavily in this area in recent years, and their figures have also dropped substantially.

This creates a paradox: our country has worked at this for 20 years, so why is this figure still always around 50,000? I believe the traffic police department is capable of grasping the real national data. So everyone can see that whether it is the severe crackdown on drunk driving that began more than a decade ago, or the sudden comprehensive crackdown on electric bike violations now, and why many places carry out "reduce volume and control major accidents," all of this is more or less influenced by this aspect. It can be said that all the work of the traffic police is more or less related to this one indicator.

The fundamental problem here is that in our traffic police sector, within the entire public security system, there is an internally tacit principle called "only do, do not speak." Especially for cases involving death, once you publicize them, that becomes negative public opinion. So as much as possible, do not expose these matters, and let everyone feel very safe. Therefore, people unconsciously become giant babies, lacking foresight, warning awareness, and vigilance toward this kind of high-risk driving behavior.

Criminal Police: The Paradox of Crackdown and Prevention

The most core task of criminal police is to crack down on crime. But in reality, the functions of criminal police, including the entire public security team, have also changed somewhat. We often hear, "Whoever manages the industry must manage safety; whoever manages the industry must manage stability." Then in criminal offenses there is no doubt about it—this is mainly a matter for the public security, procuratorate, and courts. Considering that procuratorates and courts, which have already achieved vertical management below the provincial level, basically focus on case handling and cannot run out into society to do too many other activities. Therefore, the prevention and governance of problems like crime has almost entirely become the main responsibility of public security. This is actually a great paradox. On the one hand, it must crack down on illegal and criminal acts; on the other hand, once illegal and criminal acts occur in a place, it may also involve inadequate public security work. It is under this tangled contradiction that the work indeed becomes increasingly difficult to do.

In the past, the most typical pressure in the crackdown aspect was "homicide cases must be solved." This is not law either, but superiors indeed exerted enormous pressure on you. Now it is about preventing homicides, or for major cases, there is still this pressure that they must be solved. In criminal investigation, the core indicator is the prevention of homicide cases. This problem may be even more serious than the traffic accident mortality indicator faced by traffic police. Because if a homicide occurs in your area, it is very likely not just a matter for public security alone; it may be directly connected to your entire locality, such as the party committee and government. The current homicide incidence rate in our entire country, if you check online, is about 0.4–0.5 per 100,000, which is also very leading globally. But precisely because of this leading indicator, the subsequent pressure is especially great. You cannot turn around and let it rise, right? Then you can only make it fall. If a place has a small population, say less than 400,000, calculated at this ratio it may be less than two, so at most you can only have one; if you have two, you exceed the standard. So at such times everyone is indeed very helpless. If you say that for the sake of one or two cases that might occur, you should do special prevention, how do you prevent them? From what angles do you prevent them? You simply do not know where they are.

Economic Crime Investigation: Provincial Approval and Distant-Water Fishing

In economic crime investigation cases, if you want to file an economic crime case, there is a necessary step, which is that it must be approved by the provincial-level public security department before filing. That is an obvious top-down orientation problem. Because if you submit this case to the provincial department and they do not approve it, then there is nothing you can do. Moreover, the provincial level's control over such cases may be based on the cultural habits of an entire province or provincial capital. Here, many times there are not only leaders from the provincial department, including experts in economic crime, but also possibly some police academy professors, or professors from other law schools, and the composition is also diverse. When we received training at school, police academy professors also said that they often go to participate in voting, and it is always 5:4, 4:3, and in such situations the disputes are often very large. In this zone where a case may or may not be filed, if the sub-bureau or municipal bureau below is given a decision not to file, then what do you do? Then you can only not file it. At this time it is pressure from superiors, which directly leads to the need to communicate and explain fully with the masses. Often this is the most headache-inducing.

Second, there are also some indicator factors in economic crime investigation cases. For example, some places may issue unreasonable indicators, such as how much money your public security bureau must bring into the national treasury in a year. This then easily involves a problem of "distant-water fishing." Some Guangzhou cases we once encountered, such as in their gaming industry, are particularly prominent. If you want to develop the gaming industry compliantly, it is actually very difficult. Because this market changes rapidly. A game may still have been popular in the first half of last year, and by last autumn no one was playing it. But according to formal management, every game must have a formal version number, and the application time for version numbers is long; being able to get approval in two or three years is already impressive. For large companies, another project may have a longer timeline and sufficient cash flow to burn; but for small enterprises, how could that be possible? They often just use an old version number, or use another company's version number, and release it. But this kind of game, especially games on mobile phones or computers, inevitably has a problem: people all over the country may be playing it. Then many times some local public security organs will, as long as they find one person in my neighborhood playing it, or even find someone themselves—when originally no one was playing, they themselves find someone to play it, then play for a bit, then report it, then say this game is illegal, immediately rush to Guangzhou, arrest the person in charge of the game company, and seize the money. Would you say this is legal in law? It does have some rationale, but how does it appear to the outside world? It is that whichever place has game companies, that place is unlucky.

Community Police: All-Around Requirements and the Paradox of Professionalization

The duties of community police feel to me a bit like the village chiefs of ancient times; this kind of function requires knowing how to do everything and being familiar with all local conditions. But the problem is that the village chief was a completely self-governing position, while our community police are the lowest needle under a bureaucratic hierarchy. This also involves another issue, namely the issue of professionalization and specialization. As for the entire public security team, the top wants to promote professionalization and specialized construction. The problem is that a position like community police cannot first of all be specialized, because what it requires is completely all-around capability.

What community police face is a state dominated by top-down administrative business, or driven by political pressure. But the work community police do is completely not of this model. If it were only task-based—today going out to respond to a police incident, or handling a problem within the jurisdiction—then actually there would not be much of a problem. But the problem is that the current requirements from superiors are completely not like this. It is not about having community police handle a certain matter on its own terms, but hoping that this police officer can serve as, for example, a hub center for comprehensively collecting all aspects of conditions in a community or jurisdiction. That is, whenever there are people living in your community, what may happen, which people may usually be troublemakers, which families may have conflicts or disputes that may evolve, which groups may have certain demands, especially regarding minors—it is almost as if you are required to be able to enumerate every detail at every moment.

Then if this is a task-based community police officer, what can he do? He can only analyze and compile statistics based on previous police responses or some matters he has come into contact with, but such information is certainly not comprehensive. This is completely inconsistent with the traditional rural village committee's grasp of information. For example, my mother in our village is almost a know-it-all. Whatever happens in whose family, what relationships whose family has with whose family, which relatives of whose family are connected to whom—she is actually completely clear about all of it. Who is about to have a birthday, whose family is going to take a daughter-in-law, marry off a daughter—in many cases, how can a community police officer find out about these things? If you are task-based, you simply cannot obtain such information. Another example is that in my hometown there once happened this kind of case where a man who had married out or married into the family killed his parents-in-law in retaliation. To prevent this kind of thing, you certainly first need to know that such situations exist.

In Closing

All the things mentioned above are basic problems, that is, overall, why public security work is so difficult now. These three kinds of pressure—political pressure, assessment pressure, and cultural conflict—are actually the most critical factor, and when applied to every police type and every piece of work in public security, this kind of problem exists.

Many times it is not that public security organs do not want to do it, but that objectively many things cannot be done. The most critical thing is that under a certain economic situation, if everyone has no money, many of these problems are unsolvable. So we see many parties complaining about public security organs, and they themselves also know that although they might obtain a favorable judgment through civil litigation, behind that judgment it definitely cannot be enforced. It is just that because we have not gone through this litigation procedure, the problem has not piled up in the courts, but still in public security. In fact, public security is treated as a pressure-relief valve.

That is all.