Chinese Security Forces in Guangdong Province Try Bribery

Facing a united front from the migrant workers who make the textile mills in Xintang run, the Chinese public security bureau is seeking to bribe informants and break the migrant workers’ protests.

A short notice published by the local public security bureau at the bottom of the daily newspaper gave both a warning and the offering of a bribe. “Since June 10 lawless elements in Xintang Town, Zengcheng City, have been gathering together and stirring up trouble, creating a negative impact on society,” the piece began.

The notice seemed aimed to both scare and co-opt would-be protesters.

It said that in order to “protect the safety of individuals and their property” the authorities would “severely strike out” against every form of illegal activity, before setting out three points for the reading masses.

Firstly, everyone who gathers together for public protests will be “dealt with according to the law” (though freedom of assembly is ostensibly guaranteed by China’s Constitution); secondly, the “criminal offenders” who voluntarily give themselves up and “make a clean breast of their illegal criminal activities” will be “dealt with magnanimously”; thirdly, those who report others to the authorities may be rewarded between 5,000 yuan (US$773, which is equivalent to four months pay for the textile workers) and 10,000 yuan ($1,546) and be given the title of “righteous townspeople.”

It also said that migrant workers—a large portion of the protesters—who turn in others may be given a similar honorific title and be granted a local residence permit. Residence permits, known as "hukou" in Chinese, are a method of social control still used by the Communist Party. Those who do not have a hukou for the area in which they are living are denied residency, work, and social benefits.

And those who do not possess a local hukou, known as migrant workers, are ripe targets for extortion and abuse by local authorities. It was this climate of longstanding injustice and bullying by officials and police that the protesters were lashing out against, taking to the streets in a reported crowd of over 10,000.

The incident was triggered by the beating of a pregnant 20-year-old street vendor, a migrant worker, who was pushed over and hit in the stomach by security guards, online reports said.

But the violent outburst reflected underlying anti-regime sentiment that has bubbled to the surface in a series of incidents across China recently, including coordinated bombings of government buildings and other mass movements.