Chengguan, those salt of the earth, are pushing back against negative public perceptions of their profession. One particular urban law enforcement officer in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, Jiang Yifan, created the above video recently to "clear up some misunderstandings," as Danwei's Barry van Wyk writes. A couple of things though:
This is just practice, says the video description. In the real world, a chengguan's inability to nab a scurrying chicken could result in the proliferation of that killer virus, H7N9 bird flu. Go, chenguan, go. We trust you.
A chengguan in Yingshan, Hubei province was killed in the line of duty last Saturday after he was struck in the head by a hoe.
On March 16, squad leader Duan Jinyin, 34, was reportedly leading a team in stopping an illegal construction when he was attacked. It happens at the start of the above video (discretion is advised). All it took was a single blow to knock him unconscious. He spent four days in the hospital before being pronounced dead.
“The most painful part isn’t the stabbing, but that society doesn’t understand.” That’s a quote from Guangzhou chengguan bureau chief Wei Weihan, who recently saw one of his own stabbed seven times, including five times in the head. On Sunday, Su Jiaquan, 26, was doing his job when a pineapple peddler attacked him with a... Read more »
Found on Sina Weibo, the above picture supposedly depicts a thug beating a petitioner in broad daylight on the streets of Xi’an in Shaanxi province. The man on the left is a goon allegedly hired by a demolish-and-relocate (chai-qian) gang, perhaps a real estate company or a local official. (Think the government wouldn’t get involved?... Read more »
Netizens are outraged by a recent incident in Guangzhou involving urban street management enforcers, i.e. chengguan, whose reputation continues its uninterrupted plummet in this country. A young mother was physically harassed by officers in front of her two-year-old daughter, leading commentators to urge representatives at the Two Sessions in Beijing to pay attention to this... Read more »
Earlier this month in Hainan province, this group beating. What happened?
"Chengguan beating people, I tell ya," cries Ms. Gao, a shop owner. "A gang of chengguan came and beat us."
“Are Beijing’s chengguan stealing from the homeless?” we asked in the headline of a Tuesday post. Yeah, they are. Confirmation via Xinhua: The theft of vagrants’ belongings in downtown Beijing has prompted an outcry for the protection of homeless people’s rights. A group of more than 50 uniformed, but unidentified, individuals took the possessions of homeless... Read more »
Chengguan are like referees: the less you hear about them, the better. If this is our standard, they've made progress, since we haven't heard much from them for a while. But all good streaks come to an end, so here we go, via Global Times: