You know, it's not that we don't sympathize with chengguan, China's street-level urban management officers. We get that they have a tough job, and encounter scoundrels and freeloaders on a weekly, if not daily, basis. But every single week, we see a video of chengguan somewhere behaving as poorly as the people they're supposed to police. And what are supposed to do about that?
When beating, bullying, and plundering doesn’t work, resort to mass intimidation. Urban enforcement officers in Wuhan, Hubei province are turning to the group silent treatment to smoke out “illegal” street vendors. As Caijing reports, “A new policing method is to appear in a straight line and approach illegal business operators wordlessly for maximum intimidation.” How... Read more »
Harbin Train Station, August 26. Not much more information is given on this video posted earlier this week, but the uniformed man appears to be a chengguan -- urban management officer -- and we're told the old man is a beggar. No word on what caused this scuffle, or why the chengguan seems so incensed.
The buildup is long and strange, but it’s full of wonder and intrigue. Why is the old man’s pants unbuckled? Why is he surrounded by three much younger urban enforcement officers, i.e. chengguan? Why does one of the officers appear to have a ripped shirt? Why does the old man taunt them, saying, “Come on,... Read more »
This video is a month old, but I’m posting it anyway because it’s just so rich. Watch as a bunch of goons ransack street vendors just because they can – because they’re “chengguan,” China’s street-level thugs in uniforms who are officially known as “urban management officers.” Paraphrasing something I wrote earlier on this site, you create a... Read more »
I don't know that this is strictly a public relations stunt, but I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that at least one of the scenes in the above newscast is staged. In case you missed this story, which I linked to in Monday's links post, an urban management bureau in Hefei, Anhui province has taken to hiring foreigners to do street enforcement. There are three of them, from Central African Republic, Afghanistan and South Africa, and you can check them out "in action" via Global Times.
On Monday, according to this Jiangxi news show, a chengguan (street enforcement officer) riding against traffic (this bit of info is filled in by China News) in Chengdu bumped into or scraped against a store owner, precipitating an argument. This happened off-camera. When the store owner (or someone related) begins filming -- which is completely within his right -- the chengguan loses his temper. Pushing and shoving ensues. And then, strangely -- because chengguan are just kind of boorish sometimes -- the chengguan removes his shirt, the most alpha of alpha signals that OH IT'S ON BRO, IT'S ON!
We’ve documented here that chengguan — China’s urban management/street enforcement officers — are not generally favored by the people. You might think it unfair to call them street thugs, but that’s the reputation they’ve built for themselves, and while some chengguan, surely, are decent, it’s unfortunate that it will almost always be the bad apples who... Read more »
There’s your answer. Chengguan these days just can’t catch a break. This truck — “Chengguan Law Enforcement” is what those characters say — spontaneously combusted yesterday at 9 am on Beijing’s West Fourth Ring Road, according to ifeng.com, further congesting the already-bad rush hour traffic. Apparently the smoke could be seen from a kilometer away.... Read more »
