BEIJING: Sheets of paper covered the wall inside the police station, with one for each building in the vast Beijing housing estate. In addition, every sheet was further divided into apartments and other details such as names, phone numbers.
However, the most important thing about all that was how each unit was color-coded. Thus, green indicated trustworthiness while Yellow meant needing attention. Nonetheless, Orange always needed “strict control.”
One of them walked to it and carefully inspected it. He then bent down and made a yellow mark on a third floor apartment. His note said that the residents in this particular unit were “high risk,” due to their constant changeovers. He will look into them later.
“A system has been put in place within my jurisdiction for dealing with latent dangers,” revealed an officer in a video by local government which commended his policing style as being progressive.
This is what Xi Jinping, China’s top leader wants; more visible monsters, bigger ones always watching out for real or imagined threats. They go around apartment buildings waiting to hear noise generated by neighbors who are not getting along well. At times they even hire retired people playing chess outside on benches to assist them observe other individuals doing something suspicious looking. At work places employers have had to assign “safety consultants” who report regularly to the police since 1949.
For years now, one could argue that Communist China possesses perhaps the most extensive surveillance network globally against activists and possibly voices of dissatisfaction. Yet during the COVID-19 pandemic it reached an unprecedented scale keeping track of nearly all urban inhabitants only because infection cases were targeted like this.
It is now clear that Xi intends making permanent these expanded controls if not extending them even further.
It no longer is limited to specific threats like dissidents or viruses.The goal is therefore to make sure party is so embedded in everyday life that not even petty disputes can arise.Xi calls this shift a “Fengqiao experience for a new era.” This town in the propaganda video, Zhangjiawan, a suburb of Beijing was recently touted as a national example by state media.
“Fengqiao” refers to a time when the party under Mao Zedong regime wanted inhabitants to “reopen” those who were thought to be political enemies through public humiliation and struggle sessions where individuals were forced to confess their crimes such as writing poetry that did not support communism.
He also often mentions Fengqiao in his most important speeches but Xi has not urged for revival of struggle sessions where people accused as offenders could be beaten or tortured. All the same, the concept is identical: everyday people and police are mobilized against any threats against the Party’s authority and its rightness.
They pretend it is like public service. Thus, they have “no distance between” them and the masses thus making it easier for them to gather opinions on things like garbage collection or prevent citizens from wasting time going to court for commercial disputes.As such, party mediators settle feuds within parties instead.
This has been one of Xi’s favorite talking points about how responsive and attentive he is to people’s needs because he uses phrases like “the Fengqiao experience” while muzzling dissenting voices.
It’s likewise an endeavor at staking out his own political heritage. For top officials Fengqiao constitutes an example of Xi’s leadership vision, while scholars have labeled it “a model for showcasing Chinese governance to the world.”
The campaign enhances Beijing’s repressive capabilities at a time of rising challenges. With China’s economy slowing, protests concerning wages that remain unpaid and homes that go unfinished have gone up. Warning about foreign spies everywhere, tensions with the West have led Beijing to do so. There has also been closer scrutiny by the party of groups like feminists, students and LGBT rights activists.
In the name of Fengqiao, the police have visited Tibetans, Uyghurs and other minority groups in their homes advancing policies on party. Employees have had to be registered with the police by businesses. Government officials billed “anti-cult” lectures at churches. Police officers and judges became “deputy principals of law” in elementary schools who kept records on student’s perceived risk levels.
However, through blocking even mild or apolitical criticism, the party could erode its own legitimacy as well.
A Mao idea, repurposed
Xi’s interest in the Fengqiao experience dates back two decades when he was still ascending to power.
It was 2003 and Xi had just been appointed party secretary for China’s eastern Zhejiang province. The economic opening of China had brought great wealth to this province but also increasing crime rates.Xi was looking for a way out.According to official media reports, he turned to a small Zhejiang town called Fengqiao.
This town had become part of party folklore during the 1960s after Mao asked Chinese people to confront ‘class enemies’ such as landlords or rich farmers. According to official narratives from today, initially residents clamored for arrests by police officers.While local communist leaders instead told them they should find these people themselves and “re-educate” them.
Accordingly almost 1000 reactionaries were tagged as per what Fengqiao officials said.These people eventually found it difficult getting jobs ,going school or even getting married .Mao declared it as a model for the whole country termed as the “Fengqiao experience”.Not long after, he launched another mass movement, the Cultural Revolution that led to a decade of bloodshed.
After Mao’s death, his successors shunned this phrase as they distanced themselves from chaos of his rule.
However, Xi embraced it. When he first visited Fengqiao in 2003, it was to inspect an exhibition about what happened there in the 1960s at the local police station.He then revisited a few months later and praised it for the idea of nipping problems in their bud.“The situation and responsibilities we face have changed but the Fengqiao experience is not outdated,” he said.
Xi’s call for more social control was part of a broader shift by the party, amid the rapid change of the 2000s, toward “stability maintenance” – a catchall term for containing social problems and silencing dissent.
He doubled down on that focus when he became China’s top leader in 2012.Fengqiao mentions were everywhere in state media.The next thing that happened was that coronavirus pandemic – and government started tracking individuals’ movements minute by minute.
Partly through technology requiring residents to download mobile health apps. But also relied on traditional labor. For example, using grid management officials divided cities into blocks of several hundred households with workers assigned to each block.These workers went door-to-door applying testing requirements and quarantines sometimes even by sealing people into their homes.
China’s state media celebrated its initial success in containing Covid as an evidence for the continued relevance of Fengqiao experience. In research papers from China, during the pandemic, Fengqiaoian policing has been described as a model for crisis management globally.
However, when people began to buck against these orders—in some cases leading to nationwide protests in 2022—the granular approach showed another way that it could be useful because the police could track down these individuals using cameras with facial recognition and informers.
“The architecture is there,” said Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College who recently published a book about China’s surveillance state. “I mean after three years of lockdowns and seeing how the system works probably gave them lots of insights.”
Penetration into daily life
Covid controls are over. The increased surveillance is not.
It is now clear that the government’s intensified intrusion during the pandemic was just speeding up of long-term plan. As Mao did before him, Xi wants to mobilize masses to stave off opposition but without violence; this is where technology and police enter to ensure that people never go out of control.
“This is the next iteration” of party obsession with stifling unrest,” said Suzanne Scoggins, a professor at Clark University in Massachusetts who has studied Chinese policing.
There are also large numbers of ‘security volunteers’ deployed by Beijing especially during significant political meetings or holidays. They have been assigned with maintaining order on streets: directing vagrants toward shelters, reprimanding litter bugs and informing police when they see potential demonstrators.
At central Beijing on one recent Thursday, two residents stood wearing red vests and name tags along the sidewalk. And he and his partner would be there for two hours every morning and afternoon taking care of their three apartment buildings’ grid unit said Qi Jinyou –76 years old –one among them. On regular basis other duos were posted further down the block.
Thus, one year ago, Qi joined after neighborhood officials made a call to residents’ homes recruiting them. As gifts for his participation he would receive such things as tissues or toothpaste. However, he also felt that it was his duty: “We must protect them, na?” He asked retorically: “Safety first”.
In Zhangjiawan, sometimes upheld as Fengqiao’s success story in Beijing suburbs, some residents applauded the increase of patrols. A meat seller Wang Li near a billboard bearing a smiling Xi said that they were regularly visited by neighborhood officials who checked for fire hazards like loose wires or reminded people to go for medical check-ups.
She added: ‘I feel more at ease when I see police cars on patrol after late work.’
“To grind you down”
Others too have discovered how this approach can be used as a means of coercing obedience.
On the edge of Zhangjiawan, the local government is knocking down and building up numerous villages to form a tourist attraction. In January, this number had gone up to 98% of about one thousand seven hundred dwellings, who had agreed on relocations due to village representatives visiting homes more than sixteen hundred times, according to a post shared by authorities in charge of the social media promoting how well Fengqiao experience has “taken roots”.
According to the government, they “earned trust with their professionalism and affection through sincerity.”
One villager, known as Mu, was among those who were unwilling to move out. She looked across the fields that already became flat where there are neighboring structures.
Call after call and visits went back and forth between party officials and developers’ reps who had gone over there too many times. The compensation was too low for her.
“They don’t have a proper conversation with you. They just send people to grind you down,” said Mu, asking that only her surname be used.
She claimed that during one night when negotiations dragged on men were stationed outside their home intending to intimidate them. When other buildings nearby were being demolished they even cut off their water supply but Mu insists village officials do not seem concerned: “Not a single village official has come to ask, how can we help with this water problem?”
So now she and her siblings drive into town every time they need tap water refills.
The risks of empowering low-level officials during crises
During times of pandemic it became apparent how dangerous giving sweeping political mandates was as these are executed by junior officers most often. Sometimes under pressure from infections neighborhood workers stopped residents from buying groceries or seeking medical attention.
Even high-profile activists accustomed long ago to living under surveillance have experienced increasing restrictions. Having served over four years in prison before being released in 2020 Wang Quanzhang noted that at any given moment thirty or forty individuals might be watching his home in Beijing. He shared images of groups of men dressed in black sitting inside his building and on the street following him.
He had been forced to move out by several landlords as a result of official pressures, Quanzhang continued. He also said that authorities had pressurized the schools not to accept his 11-year-old son.
“After the pandemic it became worse, because we didn’t know that they would turn against our child when they couldn’t chase us away from Beijing,” he said.
The cost of control
The viability of this labor-intensive approach rests on the dedication of its enforcers. This has often suited the party, which uses financial incentives, appeals to patriotism and sometimes threats such as job security to mobilize officials and ordinary people alike.
However, dependence on an army of paid workers may also be a major flaw for the surveillance apparatus with local governments tightening their budgets due to economic downturns.
Some community workers and police officers have already taken up social media complaining they are overworked.
Even propaganda addressing Fengqiao recognizes how hard it can be for officials asked to address compounded issues. A state media article praised a cop who helped unblock neighbors’ drainage pipes during a dispute.“Suddenly, a large amount of sewage and feces sprayed onto his head and body,” according to an unnamed article. The locals “felt both pity and gratitude,” it added.
The party’s iron fist might also hobble the dynamism essential for resuscitating the economy. “I did not make enough money to pay my rent for three months because of police officers who are always on patrol and will not let me sell my fried chicken in any place of my choice,” said one Ma, a Zhangjiawan vendor.
She said, “There will be security problems if the economy suffers. People have to eat. If they get jumpy, there’ll be chaos.”
