China.com, a website sponsored by the State Council Information Office, issued a report on the 2013 budgets that the Beijing Public Security Bureau and the Transportation Bureau published. The report stated that the total 2013 budget for the Beijing Public Security Bureau was over 3.8 billion yuan (US$610 million). Of that money, 3.2 billion yuan (US$520 million) was allocated to “public safety.” That figure represents an increase of 18.5 percent from the 2.7 billion yuan (US$430 million) that was allocated for 2012.
Hu Jia, an activist from Beijing told RFA that China has never been transparent about its spending on the military and on public safety and the situation in China has worsened compared with last year. Hu said that a politically empowered interest group makes this investment in maintaining public safety in order to maintain its monopoly on power. That group is the “Politics and Law Committee,” the group that Zhou Yongkang used to head. Hu stated, "The ‘Politics and Law Committee’ is not a state organ but rather a Party agency. … Zhou stepped down four months ago, but we felt that the situation in China worsened during the recent Lianghui (two meetings: the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) compared with the 18th National Congress last year.”
Wang Juntao, a Chinese dissident currently living in the U.S., believes that many people in China have hope that the new leadership will bring change to China, but based on what has happened so far, the new leadership is more or less trying to continue the old policy from Deng, Jiang, and Hu, which means to continue the policy of maintaining stability.
Source: Radio Free Asia, March 22, 2013
http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/jz-03222013154114.html