For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), terrorists are not really scary, but instead all the kinds of social conflicts piled up in China and their great threats against the authorities are. Olympic security gives the CCP a pompous reason to suppress different kinds of groups against them. Starting the “People’s War” actually establishes a “one-on-one” surveillance system at the grassroots level around the nation. If any unstable factor occurs at its early stage, it could be suppressed right away. Below is the translation of the article on the “people’s war” against terrorism published on Xinhua News Net. [1]
Beijing Kicks Off ‘People’s War’ Against Terrorism
By Intern Reporter Deng Yuan and Reporter Xiao Deng of International Pioneer Newspaper from Beijing
Silver high-voltage wires are standing crowdedly along the road and you can spot a security guard post every ten meters [33 feet] apart. The armed army police patrol, march, or stand in soldier poses, watching alertly at the vehicles passing by.
That was the scene that Chen Mei saw at the Beijing Capital Airport Highway on her way from Beijing to Xi’an on July 16, 2008. “Very shocking!” she said. “With this kind of scale of security force, the international athletes should feel secure and worry-free in Beijing.”
Not only the army police are at action. On July 17, 2008, the Chinese Public Safety Department Anti-Terrorism Bureau printed and distributed “Citizens on Prevention of Terrorism Attack Pamphlet” which guides the citizens on how to discover terrorists and prevent the dangers of terrorist attacks. “Stimulate the whole society to participate in anti-terrorism activities, you may say this is a people’s war against terrorism,” famous anti-terrorism expert and the director of the China Modern International Relationship Research Academy Safety and Strategy Research Institute, Li Wei, told the International Pioneer Newspaper.
Citizen Anti-Terrorism Pamphlet Out Before Olympics
The Public Safety Department Anti-Terrorism Bureau organized dedicated professionals to write and edit the “Citizens on Prevention of Terrorism Attack Pamphlet.” It focuses on how citizen could discover, distinguish, and react to terrorists and their activities. It designs a total of 39 scenarios, such as how to react when encountering explosions; arson; gun shots; kidnappings; chemical, biological and radiation attacks; how to save oneself and save each other in emergencies; how to distinguish suspicious explosive materials; etc.
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The pamphlet also reminds the citizens of seven “No”s when encountering arson so to reduce the damage by the largest scale. The seven “No”s include “Don’t panic,” “Don’t cry blindly,” “Don’t be attached to money or belongings,” “Don’t open the door or window randomly,” “Don’t ride on the elevator,” “Don’t run randomly,” and “Don’t jump out of buildings easily.” The contents relate closely with ordinary citizens. It describes details of emergency situations easily happening in daily life and the citizens’ reaction strategies.
It was reported by Xinhua News Agency that the pamphlet reminds how to distinguish the suspicious explosive materials: under the condition of not touching the suspicious materials, first see, second listen, and third smell. If you smell the smell of the rotten eggs, it could be black power; if you smell the smell of ammonia, it could be ammonia dynamite.
“The knowledge in the pamphlet is very close to daily life and it very easy to operate,” some media commented. But from Li Wei’s point of view, the introduction of this pamphlet is right on time, since the Public Safety Department Anti-Terrorism Bureau put it on its agenda when it was founded. “How to utilize the public for anti-terrorism is a long-term question in the mind of related departments,” Li Wei said, pushing this pamphlet to the public before the Olympic games with no question of the benefits of utilizing the whole society’s power to eliminate terrorism at its early stages.
Whole Society in Action on Anti-Terrorism
In fact, before this professional pamphlet was published, the whole society’s atmosphere on anti-terrorism in Beijing had started to grow and move out.
Xu Rui is a pulmonary internal medicine doctor from the Beijing Fengtai Hospital living in Shijinghshang District in Beijing. From the middle of June 2008, she went to work half an hour earlier than her regular schedule, since she had an extra task in the mornings at her hospital: study the “Medical Guide on How to Deal with Nuclear Terror.”
At the beginning of July 2007, Xu Rui and her colleagues, along with other medical workers from other hospitals, all participated in the test on anti-nuclear terror knowledge for the Olympics and Paralympics organized by the Beijing Hygiene Bureau. Talking about the half-month study, Xu Rui said, “Getting to know a lot about how to deal with the nuclear terror attack, most of the emergency methods could be quickly reacted. Even if I encountered an emergency situation now, I would not be panicked.”
Besides the medical workers, every Olympic volunteer also has a copy of “Medical Knowledge and Emergency Rescue.”
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Liao Nan, an Olympic volunteer from Renmin University of China, was in training for the second time. She got up at 7 a.m. sharp every morning and returned to her dormitory at
6 p.m. She was reciting the stadium “Emergency Exiting Routine” for the last two days. “Although we are not going to participate in the anti-terrorism drill, we still have to recite the emergency exiting routine,” she said. “This way, when danger occurs, we volunteers would be able to stay calm and strictly follow the routine.”
At every subway station in Beijing, all kinds of safety routines are set. “Fellow student, please put your bag in the screening machine,” a staff member politely reminded Yu Min when she was carrying a bag of print materials going into a subway station. “I heard two beeps, a fruit knife was found in a person’s bag,” Yu Min said. “That person was allowed to enter the subway after giving up that [knife].”
On July 20, 2008, the first day that Beijing started to implement the odd-even car plate rules, the cars on the street were much fewer than usual. Staff with red arm bands were much more. I trotted on the street for a while. On West Xuanwumen Road, one elderly man was happily talking to his coworkers about his “patrol work.”
Early this year, Zhang Yue, the former deputy director of the Beijing Police Department, was transferred to be the director of the Hebei Province Police Department. Experts interpreted this change as “a very important arrangement for the reinforcement of the Beijing-Hebei alliance for the safety of the Olympics.” Now, the barricades were set up on the roads at most villages in Hebei Province. Strange vehicles were not allowed to enter the villages. Some new safety equipment was set up on the main roads going through Beijing.
The whole society’s consciousness and atmosphere on anti-terrorism is quietly spreading from the center, Beijing.
Government Leads Whole Society on Anti-Terrorism
When talking about the stronger and stronger whole-society’s atmosphere on anti-terrorism, Li Wei, on his business trip in Luo Yang, felt really happy.
Since 2001, the Chinese government set up anti-terrorism agencies at different levels, one after another. The Foreign Minister also set up a section responsible for overall overseas security matters. The anti-terrorism system keeps getting better and better. “But these are still far from enough,” Li Wei said. According to international anti-terrorism experience, anti-terrorism is not only the government’s responsibility, but also closely related to the public, since “the targets of terrorist attacks would first be everyday people.”
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Li Wei pointed out that anti-terrorism has two aspects, one is the elimination of the existing terrorists and terrorist organizations, and another is the elimination of the source that nurtures the terrorism. For the first one, it mainly depends on government agencies, including intelligence, police, public safety, army police, and even army to attack them. But no matter how strong these anti-terrorism agencies are, they all have their limits. “These special professionals could not expand without limits, neither could they reach every aspect in society.”
On the other hand, if the public improve their consciousness, it would suppress terrorist groups’ purpose to panic the public. “Government leads, the public participates, the combination of two would eliminate the source of terrorists,” Li Wei said.
So, what can everyday people do? Li Wei believes that the power of people would be shown on powerful monitoring and prevention, “such as, people could discover suspicious persons, things, or incidents around them and report to the anti-terrorist security agencies, that would be a very efficient way of public anti-terrorism.”
[1] Endnote: Xinhua, July 22, 2008
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2008-07/22/content_8743975.htm