Alarming Trends in Chinese Society
- Thread starter solarz
- Start date
Do you know generally what happens when the cops actually shows up?
Might provide a better understanding of why they prefer not to "waste" their time.
There's also the fact China seriously lacks police presence compared to more police oriented countries like the US.
solarz
Brigadier
It's pretty ridiculous, really.
First, the 110 operator tells you that there's no need for the cops to come over, that your family member(s) won't really hurt you, etc. They only send the cops over if you keep insisting, and sometimes even insisting doesn't work.
And when the cops do come over, they try to "mediate". No arrests, not even a warning, they just tell everyone to calm down and talk things out, which of course works as well as you might expect.
I heard this from first-hand account.
superdog
Junior Member
No it isn't "all theoretical", there are widespread changes in policy and in practice on how authorities will intervene in a DV situation. Is it enough? Not at all, it still lags behind countries like the US and Canada by a large margin, not to mention US and Canada themselves aren't exactly the best role models. An additional problem for China is that it doesn't have nearly as much law enforcement resources as these developed countries, so they still rely heavily on non-legal and informal (and unreliable) resolutions, as you have pointed out. But I'm also saying you shouldn't discount the fact that awareness and intervention policies on DV has been changing quite rapidly in China for the last couple of years.
airsuperiority
Captain
Technically, mediating and talking is the best way for most people. Unfortunately, if you needed to call the police, the situation obviously has already gone above and beyond, and cops are needed there. However of course there are always dumbasses who dial the emergency line for the most undeserved things..and also those times where slow reactions of police costed someone's life
Another question I wonder if it is valid to ask is, how knowledgeable are people towards the proper use of the emergency line? Apparently even in Canada, there are people who call up 911 for the most undeserving reasons, and that being said, I won't be surprised there are just as much of the flux of useless calls that people make for pointless reasons that strains the service's resources and proper usage.
Not surprising at all. Domestic / Family issues was never in the jurisdiction of police force from the very beginning. They are call 公安， public security for a reason. These sort of issue was in the domains of community councils (居委会) as well as work units (工作单位). However, because of reforms in the past 30 years, these two organization no longer exists in its original form, and are in no position to intervene in these matters.
What China needs to work on to have social work organization that replaces the functions of community councils, (private companies unfortunately no longer link personal behavior (作风) with work points... and of course there is no more work points anyways. I just dated myself) and expand the role of police in dealing with family dispute.
It's a matter of a transition period rather a trend really
What China needs to work on to have social work organization that replaces the functions of community councils, (private companies unfortunately no longer link personal behavior (作风) with work points... and of course there is no more work points anyways. I just dated myself) and expand the role of police in dealing with family dispute.
It's a matter of a transition period rather a trend really
Well I have two relatives working in China's Police Force, from what I have learned, our police force is dangerously short-staffed.
Can you imagine that a police precinct consists of 20 police officers and handful of auxiliary policemen in the US or UK have to 'protect and serve' literally tens of thousands of people? This is the normal work load for China's police. Also, in China, a typical police station with 50 regular officers are responsible for:
1. Patrolling on foot or in vehicles;
2. Conducting family registration and non-resident registration*;
3. Handling minor offences;
4. Inspect certain business entities as requested by law;
5. Solving 'simple criminal cases';
6. Help solving not-so-simple criminal cases;
7. Community policing;
8. Many other things that come from the strokes of genius of their superiors.
*: According to my relatives this is the largest part of police work, sometimes idle CID officers and SWAT officers are ordered to help them with this matter.
More importantly, if anyone here pay attention to the terrorist attack at the train station in Kunming, there were only a handful of police officers presence when the attack commenced. And in the first SWAT team arrived on scene, only one officer was armed with a cold war-era auto rifle, three other officers were unarmed, which again, is completely unimaginable in the West.
The true reasons behind all these unfortunate domestic violence incidents are insufficient police manpower, and traditional Chinses culture that discourage government meddling with family affairs. The police does not has the resource, nor the will to get involved in domestic violence case, which is a traditionally the purview of Women's League, a QUANGO that can provide nothing more than counseling, sometimes not even counseling.
I can only hope that the situation will be better in the future.
Can you imagine that a police precinct consists of 20 police officers and handful of auxiliary policemen in the US or UK have to 'protect and serve' literally tens of thousands of people? This is the normal work load for China's police. Also, in China, a typical police station with 50 regular officers are responsible for:
1. Patrolling on foot or in vehicles;
2. Conducting family registration and non-resident registration*;
3. Handling minor offences;
4. Inspect certain business entities as requested by law;
5. Solving 'simple criminal cases';
6. Help solving not-so-simple criminal cases;
7. Community policing;
8. Many other things that come from the strokes of genius of their superiors.
*: According to my relatives this is the largest part of police work, sometimes idle CID officers and SWAT officers are ordered to help them with this matter.
More importantly, if anyone here pay attention to the terrorist attack at the train station in Kunming, there were only a handful of police officers presence when the attack commenced. And in the first SWAT team arrived on scene, only one officer was armed with a cold war-era auto rifle, three other officers were unarmed, which again, is completely unimaginable in the West.
The true reasons behind all these unfortunate domestic violence incidents are insufficient police manpower, and traditional Chinses culture that discourage government meddling with family affairs. The police does not has the resource, nor the will to get involved in domestic violence case, which is a traditionally the purview of Women's League, a QUANGO that can provide nothing more than counseling, sometimes not even counseling.
I can only hope that the situation will be better in the future.
solarz
Brigadier
Thank you for the information. I had an inkling that Chinese police were overworked and understaffed, but 20-30 people to oversee tens of thousands is pretty crazy!
They seriously need to move the majority of the paperwork to a different department. There's no reason policemen should be handling registrations when clerks can easily handle it.