A rather interesting debate has appeared on the China Law Discussion list..
M. Dowdle a regular contributor to the list has noted the following about recent police tactics in Urumqi.. and writes the following. The last paragraph is especially interesting with regard to precedents and the rule of law in China
Several days ago, I recommended Flora Sapio’s blog noting how Gongan forces in Urumqi using the Road Traffic Safety Law (!) to try to suppress Urumqi rioters. Along this lines, I just found (well, actually Dali Yang found it first) an interesting account by a Daily Telegraph journalist named Peter Foster (see http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/peterfoster/) that offers a very intriguing gloss on all this. According to Foster, who was in Urumqi during the riots, the way the police may have effectively diffused the riots appears to have been partially through the use of traffic control as traffic control (and not simply as a pretext for administrative detention). Apparently, the paramilitary allows the Han to demonstrate, but they used trafffic control to prevent the demonstrators from coming into contact with Uighurs. In relevant part, he wrote:
"On Tuesday they [the paramilitary] walked a fine line between confronting the Han protesters – keeping them separate from the Uighur community at a time when there was a real sense of blood lust in the air – and allowing them they chance to vent their legitimate anger and frustration. . . . In the event, the Han crowds on Tuesday effectively were allowed to go round and round in circles, exhausting themselves in the hot sun while never actually being allowed to reach the objects of their anger."
It’s not clear whether the same tactic was also used on Uighur protestors, but maybe:
"Similarly on Tuesday when a crowd of Uighur women and children of the Sai Ma Chang (Racetrack) district led a protest against the arrest of their men, the police contained the protest – showing force, but judiciously withdrawing a few hundred metres just at the moment when it looked as if things might get nasty."
For those of you with a theoretical bent, there are some very interesting implications in all this regarding the relationship between juridificaiton ("legalization") and evolutions in modes of social structuring and control. If this account is accurate, then the juridification of road safety regulation may have triggered an unforeseen institutional learning on the part of "public security" about how to handle demonstrations (something the Chinese police have traditionally not been particularly good at, and which we may presume the Traffice Safety Law was not thought of addressing). And this, in turn, means that maybe the distinction between "rule of law" and "rule by law" is not so great or significant as we have been wont to assume insofar as regulatory development is concerned.
Harvard academic Glenn Tiffert takes a different view and believes that we aren’t seeing anything particularly surprising
I’m not sure why the use of traffic laws and ordinary police power in Urumqi is regarded as particularly surprising or creative. Since 6/4, the PRC has invested heavily in the resources and training necessary to meet urban disturbances with a graduated set of responses short of military force. China is now a large exporter of the police and para-military gear used in such responses.
Using the PLA for domestic suppression is not popular within China (judging from 6/4), is politically costly bureaucratically,
domestically and internationally, sets ministries and powerful stakeholders against each other, and risks poor execution because urban riot control and war-fighting are two very different missionsrequiring different tactics and equipment.
Since 6/4, China has carefully studied riot control laws and procedures around the world. Moreover, the PAP has raised itsstandards and, at least in XJ, clearly trained very hard for thismission. It seems to have been well-disciplined and commanded in this instance. The contrast with the response to last year’s Tibet riotsis striking and worth exploring.
While each legal system and jurisdiction varies as to the details, many Western police forces regularly invoke traffic safety, public order and safety laws to deal with mass demonstrations and riots. Such laws often permit short term detention under the right circumstances, and it is not uncommon for hundreds of people to be detained in this way and then released shortly thereafter without charge or with fines or misdemeanors. That China has found this a worthy approach (practically and in terms of public relations both domestic and foreign) now seems evident.
Think of pretty much any G8 summit in the last decade, and especially the 2004 Republican Convention in NYC, and you’ll see what I mean.
