Taken in Guzhen, the tourist village of Tongli, Jiangsu province.

Here’s a clearer look (photo by Geoffrey Irving). I want that cap.

Of course, chengguan. OF COURSE.

Via ECNS:

An urban management officer, or Chengguan, in Jiangsu province has started wearing Google Glass as part of his law enforcement kit, the Yangtze Evening Post observed on Monday.

The officer named Jiang Yifan is a member of the urban management team in Tianning district of Changzhou city. Jiang has posted a photo of himself wearing the electronic glasses on his Sina Weibo account.

Technology, man.

This morning, my wife and I set out to make a trip to the hospital. Because we were in a rush, we decided to rent a sanlunche (motorized tricycle) to take us to the nearest subway station. We hailed one on the main road outside the north gate of our community at about 8:45 am.

Our driver proceeded westbound on Chaoyang Road until reaching the McDonald’s across the north gate of Beijing International Studies University. At the intersection, she turned right onto Dingfuzhang Street and proceeded north toward Dalianpo station on Subway Line 6.

After driving 300 meters, the driver said someone was following her and asked us to pay the fare immediately. The unknown car continued to tailgate us as we passed the nearby Jingkelong, and our driver made a hard right onto a small community road hoping they would give up pursuit.

What happened was the complete opposite.

In less than 50 meters the car flanked us and forced our driver off the road. The sanlunche went up onto two wheels and almost rolled over.

Looking out the window we saw that the car was marked as belonging to the Sanjianfang Town birth control department. Our driver kept shouting at the men to stop following her.

Two young men between the ages of 16 and 19 jumped out of the car brandishing clubs. They were wearing ill-fitting coats that looked like generic ones used by most private security guards.

One man screamed, “Fuck your mother!” and smashed in the right rear window, which was beside me. Glass rained in like powder, with the small bits sticking to my hands and large chunks landing in my shoes and coat pockets.

A moment later, the window on my wife’s side was smashed by another of the men.

Our driver took off again and the men did not pursue. By the time we reached the subway my hands were bleeding in six places.

The driver said the attackers were “black” (gang-related) “chengguan” who are being employed illegally by the Sanjianfang Town government. [Ed's note: chengguan are street-level, often extrajudicial urban management officers who have a reputation for behaving poorly. We can't say for sure the attackers were chengguan, but they were driving a government vehicle.]

When we got on the subway, my wife took a few pictures of the glass, which we were digging out of our pockets, and of my hands, which were still bleeding.

At first I regretted not pulling out my camera to record the incident. In hindsight, had I done so my wife and I would have certainly completed our trip to the hospital – most likely by way of ambulance.

Derrick Sobodash is the deputy editor-in-chief of Beijing Today

“The first X on the route is where the car began following us. The second X is where the attack took place. There actually is a new road there, but Baidu Ditu and Google do not index it yet.”

The Global Times recently published an editorial titled, “What if Chinese police beat a jaywalker?” covering the recent case of a Chinese man allegedly beaten by police for resisting arrest after jaywalking in New York. It’s a sad story, and it shows a brutal side of America’s police.

Unfortunately, and I do mean actual non-ironic unfortunately here, the nationalist mouthpiece that is The Global Times is not allowed to write this kind of editorial with this kind of title without sounding completely ridiculous.

However, things might be the other way around if the same incident happened in China. The local police would be charged with abuse of power, and the head of the local police department would have to apologize and the errant police officers could be punished or even sacked.

Bull.

Tell that to the Chengguan who beat fruit vendor Deng Zhengjia to death.

Tell that to the group of 50 or so Chengguan who attacked an entire village in Lianyugang in Jiangsu Province.

Tell that to the street peddler beaten by police while his nine year old daughter pleads, Stop beating my daddy,” “I’m begging you,” “We’re sorry,” and “You can go ahead and take the stuff.”

Whatever problems America’s police force has, they are nothing compared to the corrupt incompetence that is China’s Chengguan. I wish you could be a force checking America’s internal violence Global Times, but writing from China you just look ridiculous.

So, who wants to be a chengguan?

chinaSMACK reports via Beijing Times that 19 chengguan in Xiamen, Fujian province were victims of a sulfuric acid attack on October 16, with 18 of them needing hospital treatment.

Yesterday, Xiamen city Tong’an district City Management and Administration Law Enforcement Agency Joint-Section chief confirmed this incident to this Beijing Times reporter and said the chengguan team members were handling a Land and Resources Bureau’s aerial photography case at the time of the incident, and this incident caused various degrees of burns to 19 chengguan team members with 18 of them being hospitalized for treatment.

Feel sorry for them, feel sorry for them not. Feel sorry for them…

You can watch the moment a villager supposedly attacked the chengguan in the above video. Interestingly, when chengguan travel in packs like this, there’s always someone holding a camcorder, probably to capture exactly these type of unprovoked attacks.

Of course, there was provocation, in the form of a bulldozer running over someone’s home. Something tells us this little fact will be deemed irrelevant in a court of law.

Sulfuric Acid Thrown at Chengguan in Xiamen, 18 Hospitalized (chinaSMACK)

A new set of regulations called the “Guangzhou Metropolitan Comprehensive Law Enforcement Work Standards” went into effect on Tuesday, essentially forcing chengguan — urban management officers — to be congenial. As Danwei reports, the law “state[s] clearly that chengguan may not use profane or threatening language while enforcing their duties, may not damage private property, and may not use any form of violence or intimidation,” and “to use words like ‘please,’ ‘thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry.’”

There are two ways of looking at this:

It could be a sign of progress, a formal acknowledgment by the city’s enforcement officers that chengguan should practice courtesy because the people they deal with on a regular basis — street vendors, peddlers, the homeless — are human beings who deserve to be treated humanely.

Or it could be yet another indication of how fucked up the urban management officer system is: legislation is required for chengguan to be nice.

So how do you see China? As a continually improving country on the track of progress, or a backwards nation whose ambition outstrips its morals? (As always, the answer is “neither.”)

Another snippet from Danwei:

In addition to using nice words, the chengguan now also cannot randomly damage private property, do their duties after drinking alcohol, or take recourse to any other kind of violent or unseemly behavior.

These are things that seem… self-explanatory? We didn’t think “don’t drink on the job” was something that needed to be explicated. Baby steps, I suppose.

It’s the law: Chengguan in Guangzhou now have to be nice (Danwei) (Image via)

Dude, where’s my car?

In a story that would make researchers of the Stanford prison experiment proud, on September 20 in a village in Anhui, a 15-year-old surnamed Pan found keys inside an urban management official’s car — a chengguan’s vehicle — hopped in, and almost instantly began trying to enforce the “law” as chengguan would.

According to People’s Daily, Pan went so far as to shout at street vendors, “I’ll give you half an hour to clear out your things, or I’m going to move it for you…”

On one particular stretch of road that usually never sees chengguan, the roadside vendors got suspicious. Thusly called out, Pan ended his power trip.

He later admitted that he did it to show off, for the sake of vanity. Of course he’d had no formal training in law enforcement.

Hmm. Come to think of it, he’d make a great chengguan, actually.

(H/T Kevin McGeary)

Street vendor Xia Junfeng, as depicted on the Internet

Published in collaboration with Offbeat China.

“I won’t comply!”

Those were reportedly the last words of Xia Junfeng, a street vendor who ran a kebab stall in Shenyang, Liaoning province, just before his excution on Wednesday. Four years ago, in what he insisted was an act of self-defense, Xia stabbed to death two urban city management enforcement officers — chengguan — and wounded another. Most Chinese, including many law professionals, believed Xia should have been charged with “excessive defense,” but after four years of appeals, the Supreme Court finally approved his death sentence.

In a country where the use of capital punishment is widely supported, Xia’s case has revived a heated public discussion of whether it’s time for China to abolish capital punishment. Many pointed out that capital punishment has become China’s new class divide – the death penalty is a “privilege” reserved for the powerless.

Much of the outcry can be attributed to the fact that Xia was a street vendor, and the two men he killed were chengguan, a much hated group known for abusive tactics. It’s not uncommon to hear about street vendors who have been beaten to death by chengguan officers. But when street vendors are the victims, the death sentence is seldom, if at all, applied. For example, two years ago, also in Liaoning province, three chengguan officers who beat an elderly man to death were sentenced to 11 years and 3 years in prison, respectively.

Another reason for the public’s anger is a strong sense of judicial inequality. Many compared Xia with Gu Kailai, wife of politician Bo Xilai, who murdered a British businessman. Her death sentence was “suspended,” which more likely than not means she’ll get out on medical parole sooner than later.

“If capital punishment punishes only the people, then it’s better to be abolished,” commented netizen丁来峰. “I suggest China abolish capital punishment. If you are an official, you will be sentenced to suspended life at most, even after you take hundreds of millions in bribes. If you are an official, you will be sentenced to suspended death even after you’ve murdered a foreigner. If you are an official, even a lowest ranking one, you will be okay after beating someone to death because your boss will use taxpayers’ money to pay the victim’s family off. But if you are just an ordinary citizen and you kill out of self-defense, then you will be executed.”

Many of China’s supporters of capital punishment still believe that the death penalty is necessary and point to its use in punishing corrupt officials. But Xia’s case has prompted even staunch capital punishment advocates to rethink their reasoning.

“I used to support limiting capital punishment — not full revoking of it — because I hoped that the use of capital punishment culd curb corruption,” explained 何兵, associate dean of the law school at China University of Political Science and Law. “But Liu Zhijun [former head of China Rail, charged with corruption] was exempt from death; Gu Kailai was exempt from death; while Zeng Chengjie [developer charged with a pony scheme] was executed; Xia Junfeng was executed… if the death penalty doesn’t apply to officials, it shouldn’t apply to the people, either. Call for a complete dismantling of capital punishment.”

Netizen 桃谷散人 held the same view: “I once opposed abolishing capital punishment in China, naively believing that the government would use the death penalty to punish the corrupt and save the people. But the reality is that none of the corrupt is executed, only ordinary people.” Another netizen, 谭_zoe崽崽, added, “Now I realize that in an unfair judicial system that rules by the wills of officials, capital punishment must be dismantled!”

Alia is the founder of Offbeat China, where this post also appears.

According to the video description, as brought to us by chinaSMACK, urban management officers in Qingdao, Shandong province attempted to demolish the guard room of a “military compound” on the afternoon of September 4. They were met with resistance, as guards and — reportedly, though this is disputed — actual soldiers came out looking for — and getting; this part is not disputed — a fight.

Of course, facts in this case are unverified; we can’t be sure that the building being razed actually belongs to the military. Maybe paramilitary? Maybe an equivalent of the highway patrol, or coast guard? Not sure. But as one netizen deadpanned: “Chengguan are stronger than the military.” That’s not technically true, but considering the power these chengguan wield — and the numbers in which they roll — it sure sometimes seems like it.

Iron Mike Tyson, former heavyweight champion of the boxing world, registered a verified Sina Weibo account on Monday, and four posts later, he’s already hitting all the right spots. Check out his most recent message:

As Offbeat China explains:

After greeting his online fans in China, Tyson asked: “Who is the best fighter in China?” In response, one genius Chinese netizen jianlin_ryan answered: “城管 (cheng guan), urban management.”

“Who is Chengguan? A tough man? I’ve never heard it.” Tyson replied.

Tyson might not know what chengguan are, but we hope he does. And we hope he realizes full well that chengguan are bullies who only pick on the weak and powerless. Chengguan, a tough man? Not at all. They’re weak and pathetic in the popular perception — weak and pathetic enough to kill fruit vendors and stomp on people’s heads, among other things.

Welcome to China’s side of the Internet, Mike. We really hope, in real life, you’ll cross paths someday with a chengguan.

Mike Tyson challenged China’s urban law enforcement officers (Offbeat China)

Heck of a lede by the Associated Press:

Having the dead guy jump up for a drink probably wasn’t part of the script.

Do continue.

A staged protest claiming that city officials had beaten a sidewalk vendor to death in central China went awry when the man playing dead under a white sheet was overcome by the region’s heat wave and sprang up to quaff a bottle of water, state media reported Monday.

“It’s too hot. I can’t bear it anymore,” the man was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The Economist’s Gady Epstein reminds that this was a story taken from Xinhua, so who really knows, but if this account is true, it’s yet another reminder that Chinese news can occasionally be phenomenal. “Hair-brained scheme to extort Chengguan goes awry,” tweets Eric Fish. Who needs a poet to write about mice and men when you have Xinhua?

AP continues:

More than 10 men had gathered Saturday with a gurney that purportedly carried the vendor’s body, covered by a sheet, in the Hubei provincial capital Wuhan. They were demanding tens of thousands of yuan (thousands of dollars) in compensation for the alleged death, Xinhua said.

The incident drew 300 onlookers and about 80 police officers.

It was not immediately clear how the group intended to press their claims without submitting the body for an investigation and autopsy. In any case, the game was up when the man — as Xinhua reported — jumped up after two hours under the sheet.

The people should have hired a better actor. This street cleaner, for instance.

China’s heat wave brings ‘dead’ man back to life (AP) (Image via)

According to the description on a video recently posted to Youku and translated by chinaSMACK, a street peddler was recently beaten up by uniformed staff from the Shichahai Integrated Management Office in front of his nine-year-old daughter, whose pleas of “Stop beating my daddy,” “I’m begging you,” “We’re sorry,” and “You can go ahead and take the stuff,” were ignored.

To help his 9-year-old daughter gain some practical work experience during her summer break, Mr. Tian, who lives near Shichahai [near Beijing], took his daughter to East Qianhai to practice peddling lamps on the street. [While doing so] at around 9 pm on July 25, [Tian] was beaten by people in uniforms similar to that of security guards. To prevent the wares they were peddling from being confiscated by chengguan city management, Mr. Tian had printed an explanation on an A4-sized piece of paper: “I am an elementary school student, learning about society, challenging myself, [hoping to have a] happy summer vacation, and I hope city management uncles can be supportive. Thank you!”

Other chengguan who were at the scene apparently did nothing to stop the beating. One can barely see anything in the video — it’s basically just a child screaming, which can get kind of distressing after a while — but the takeaway is this: the officers involved in this scene are either heartless or slaves to the law.

We’ve seen chengguan harass parents in front of their young children before, to say nothing of group beatings, etc. We could repeat the mantra here, but you probably already know it. Better luck next time not soiling your reputation, guys.

UPDATE, 7:40 pm: Via Xinhua:

A father has denied that a Thursday incident at Shichahai was a deliberate attempt to attract public attention to violence perpetrated by local law enforcement officers.

Tian Yudong, who said he was accompanying his daughter to experience life, told the Global Times on Sunday that he had no connections with The Beijing News and he would like to face his doubters.

Tian and his 9-year-old daughter had a physical confrontation with scenic area management officers, at Shichahai while they sold things by the street side on Thursday. Tian and three officers were injured in the conflict.

City Management Beats Father In Front of Crying Daughter (chinaSMACK)

Deng Zhengjia, a fruit vendor, died suspiciously on Wednesday after scuffling with chengguan, i.e. this country’s much-maligned urban management officers. His family claims he was killed after a blow to the head by an officer — a charge that chengguan denied yesterday. Reports Global Times:

A county chief from Chenzhou, Hunan Province Thursday said there is no evidence a local fruit vendor was killed due to a blow to the head during a physical conflict with a team of urban management officers, or chengguan, despite accusations from the dead man’s family members and witnesses.

But chengguan in China have somewhat of a credibility problem, thanks to incidents like this, so the people’s response has been to riot. Fruit vendor dies, police involved, riots ensue… hmm, where have we seen this before?

Leave it to SCMP to make the connection obvious:

One netizen compared the Hunan watermelon seller’s fate to that of the Tunisian vegetable vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, whose vegetable cart was seized by police in Sidi Bouzid in 2010. In desperation, he set himself on fire. His death triggered the fall of Tunisia’s authoritarian regime of Ben Ali and those in three other countries, so far.

The odds of an Arab Spring happening in China anytime soon, as we’ve documented before, are slim, but they’re basically none in this case. Chengguan have always been seen as extralegal, so the battle here may be one against organized thuggery rather than the state.

What a battle that could be, though. Everyone knows the chengguan system needs reform — better training for the officers, better pay to attract better talent, etc. — but inertia has largely kept the current structure in place, ensuring bad apples will continue to cause embarassing incidents. Isn’t that right, Global Times op-ed writer?

Violent law enforcement by a minority of chengguan is caused by their personal qualities as well as the complexity of their duties. If the violence of chengguan is proved to be the direct cause of Deng’s death, then this will become a criminal case. Noticeably, it has nothing to do with the chengguan system.

Well then. We eagerly await the next bout of violence involving a “minority of chengguan.”

UPDATE, 12/30, 7:08 pm: Four chengguan have been sentenced. Via SCMP:

A Chinese court on Friday sentenced four municipal security officers to prison for a clash that left a watermelon seller dead and triggered a public outcry.

The Yongxing County People’s Court said in a notice on its website that the four officers were convicted of intentional injury and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 3.5 to 11 years in prison.

The more of China you see, the more you understand to not take things at face value. But not knowing a thing about the lead-up to this brawl in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province on Monday — maybe the villagers were being really annoying, I dunno — we wonder: how big is the budget for chengguan at this place? I see several dozen of them on the scene, fighting about, oh, six to eight people. (We’re not completely sure what’s up with the uniformed men in white hard-hats. The Youku description says there were 50 to 60 chengguan.) One villager gets stomped while he’s already down.

Lots of poor fighting form. Look at the kick on this guy:

What is that, bro? And like so, the chengguan’s bad week continues.

Toward the end, there’s a bit of chasing, and is it just me or does it seem like chengguan are splitting themselves in twain and proliferating in number? One bystander with a stroller scurries out of the way.

“Chengguan attacking people,” says a woman’s voice. The villager’s rally cry.

The death of a watermelon farmer in Chenzhou City, Linwu county, Hunan province attracted the attention of authorities because of the suspicious nature of his death — beaten, it seemed. But after an investigation, authorities concluded that chengguan did not have a role in the man’s death, a result that enraged the farmer’s family.

Kin, neighbors and townsfolk gathered for a late-night protest yesterday. According to Sina Weibo user @dapeng666, officials responded by cutting off all the streetlights. The move was, perhaps, to also prevent people from filming or taking pictures.

What will the morning bring? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile in Kunming, a street peddler was spotted blocking Haiming Road on July 13, leading to an argument with chengguan. While this was happening, according to eyewitnesses, bystanders began taking pictures and video, which the chengguan did not like. A confrontation followed, leading to a brawl that caused about a dozen people to sustain injuries. The peddler’s food cart got it pretty bad, too:

Chengguan have not had a good week. One more example forthcoming in a few hours. Update: here’s what we mean.

(H/T @MissXQ)

UPDATE, 7/18, 2:14 pm: Via Sina:

The [Sina Weibo] blast said the husband of a couple, who sold watermelon near a bridge, died after he had a dispute with the Chengguan. Witness said the husband was beaten in the head by an iron weight during the brawl.

The families of the victim fought against the government officials who planned to loot the vendor’s corpse, which attracted crowd of onlookers.

“The government dispatched over 200 armed police and finally snatched the corpse,” a reporter with CCTV revealed on his Sina Weibo.

Looting a corpse, yes, would be a new low.