Crime & Punishment in China
I've become a bit cynical about Chinese criminals and the ability, or will, of the Chinese authorities to deal with it. By Chinese I include Hong Kong police and mainland. The crooks cannot really be differentiated either, they are seamless across the borders.
I'm not an expert, not even an Old China Hand, just a gweilo, still green, who can't help but shake his head over what he reads in the newspapers or hears around the marina.
In the first place the bad guys are ruthless, utterly ruthless. The Triads are the local version of the Mafia, but in addition to their crime syndicates they do thuggery for hire. Recently a step-mother, in a financial dispute with her husband, with whom she lived, hired some triad members to "chop" her eight year old step-son, also a member of the household. Chopping, in China, means just what it says. These despicable folks attacked the kid on a public street with machetes, focusing on one of his arms, intending to complete their assignment of rendering his hand useless for rest of his life. Nice step-son, nice crooks.
In another case of "chopping", a white investment banker, who volunteered to tend bar at a local pub while the regular bartender and owner participated in a charity fund raising event, was mistaken by the triad thugs hired to teach the regular employees a lesson for not paying the required "protection" payments to their bosses. When the banker went to leave the premises the triad guys jumped him as he climbed into a cab, and hacked away at his arms and head, then jumped on the back of waiting motorbikes, and roared away.
The police are, a) Worthless b) Corrupt c) Idiotic. They rarely catch anyone who is trying to hide. An exception is the chopping of the eight year old. His story generated so much sympathy in the press that the police were forced into action. After a week of investigation they finally arrested eight people, including the loving step-mom.
What the police in China are good at is catching people who aren't hiding. For example, if you are a reporter who writes a story considered to be critical of the Chinese authority, they find you right away, arrest you, and a few weeks or months later they will reveal that they have you in custody and have charged you with revealing state secrets. Anything can be declared a "state secret" after the fact if it contributes to a harmful story, and if it read by foreigners ... well, that can also be considered spying.
If you are a villager whose "elected chief" had been stealing land or money which should belong to the village , and who finally pushes you to the limit by condemning your land and house so his crony can start a development, and when your complaints go unanswered so you decide to protest, this is also cause for arrest - yours.
But do they catch the chiefs who steal the land and money and then take a runner? No. Most likely they warn him in time for him to make good his escape.
The list of crimes which go unsolved is astounding.
Astounding, that is until you remember that the job of police in China is to protect those who pay for protection, and otherwise to do as little as possible.
For example, I can walk into the computer marts in Wan Chai and easily buy pirated software. Any software you could wish for: Microsoft Windows XP, Adobe Photoshop, Autocad, anything. It's not like making a drug buy on the street where you have to approach some shady character and, with furtive eyes, make a secretive deal. These shops are permanently there, they have signs, displays, and prices are posted. But the police can't seem to make many arrests for piracy. Occasionally they make a high profile bust of some warehoused operator with a few million copies of something, and then the head police guys get to make a TV speech, but it's all staged, we know it, and the piracy continues.
The richest woman in China, Mz. Wang, who is worth about $24 billion, inherited her wealth from her husband, who simply disappeared one day, was never seen again, and who had just, amazingly, written a will giving it all to her, or so she purported. The only witness to the signing of this new will was the loyal butler, who made a deposition to that effect. and then disappeared himself, and wound up dead some time later, before he could be interrogated. The father-in-law fought the wife over the will, but lost. Meanwhile he, at 94, is missing in action too. Where? No one, not even his lawyers, seem to know. The daughter-in-law, in a fit of generosity said, "We are looking for him, we want to help him. As soon as we get our hands on him we'll take care of him." Huh? Was something lost in the translation of that or did she really say that?
Oh, her 70-something doctor brother was recently attacked as he walked the dog. Four men jumped out from behind bushes and beat him and the dog with baseball bats. The press didn't even have to allude to the possibility that it was father-in-law who was behind that nice piece of work. No one in Hong Kong needed anything as obvious as that told to them. It was, quite simply, and everyone knew it, punishment to the daughter-in-law for trying to keep her missing husband's money from the 94 year old man.
Have any of these misdeeds been solved by the police? Of course not.
That's crime and punishment in China.
Fred Roswold
I'm not an expert, not even an Old China Hand, just a gweilo, still green, who can't help but shake his head over what he reads in the newspapers or hears around the marina.
In the first place the bad guys are ruthless, utterly ruthless. The Triads are the local version of the Mafia, but in addition to their crime syndicates they do thuggery for hire. Recently a step-mother, in a financial dispute with her husband, with whom she lived, hired some triad members to "chop" her eight year old step-son, also a member of the household. Chopping, in China, means just what it says. These despicable folks attacked the kid on a public street with machetes, focusing on one of his arms, intending to complete their assignment of rendering his hand useless for rest of his life. Nice step-son, nice crooks.
In another case of "chopping", a white investment banker, who volunteered to tend bar at a local pub while the regular bartender and owner participated in a charity fund raising event, was mistaken by the triad thugs hired to teach the regular employees a lesson for not paying the required "protection" payments to their bosses. When the banker went to leave the premises the triad guys jumped him as he climbed into a cab, and hacked away at his arms and head, then jumped on the back of waiting motorbikes, and roared away.
The police are, a) Worthless b) Corrupt c) Idiotic. They rarely catch anyone who is trying to hide. An exception is the chopping of the eight year old. His story generated so much sympathy in the press that the police were forced into action. After a week of investigation they finally arrested eight people, including the loving step-mom.
What the police in China are good at is catching people who aren't hiding. For example, if you are a reporter who writes a story considered to be critical of the Chinese authority, they find you right away, arrest you, and a few weeks or months later they will reveal that they have you in custody and have charged you with revealing state secrets. Anything can be declared a "state secret" after the fact if it contributes to a harmful story, and if it read by foreigners ... well, that can also be considered spying.
If you are a villager whose "elected chief" had been stealing land or money which should belong to the village , and who finally pushes you to the limit by condemning your land and house so his crony can start a development, and when your complaints go unanswered so you decide to protest, this is also cause for arrest - yours.
But do they catch the chiefs who steal the land and money and then take a runner? No. Most likely they warn him in time for him to make good his escape.
The list of crimes which go unsolved is astounding.
Astounding, that is until you remember that the job of police in China is to protect those who pay for protection, and otherwise to do as little as possible.
For example, I can walk into the computer marts in Wan Chai and easily buy pirated software. Any software you could wish for: Microsoft Windows XP, Adobe Photoshop, Autocad, anything. It's not like making a drug buy on the street where you have to approach some shady character and, with furtive eyes, make a secretive deal. These shops are permanently there, they have signs, displays, and prices are posted. But the police can't seem to make many arrests for piracy. Occasionally they make a high profile bust of some warehoused operator with a few million copies of something, and then the head police guys get to make a TV speech, but it's all staged, we know it, and the piracy continues.
The richest woman in China, Mz. Wang, who is worth about $24 billion, inherited her wealth from her husband, who simply disappeared one day, was never seen again, and who had just, amazingly, written a will giving it all to her, or so she purported. The only witness to the signing of this new will was the loyal butler, who made a deposition to that effect. and then disappeared himself, and wound up dead some time later, before he could be interrogated. The father-in-law fought the wife over the will, but lost. Meanwhile he, at 94, is missing in action too. Where? No one, not even his lawyers, seem to know. The daughter-in-law, in a fit of generosity said, "We are looking for him, we want to help him. As soon as we get our hands on him we'll take care of him." Huh? Was something lost in the translation of that or did she really say that?
Oh, her 70-something doctor brother was recently attacked as he walked the dog. Four men jumped out from behind bushes and beat him and the dog with baseball bats. The press didn't even have to allude to the possibility that it was father-in-law who was behind that nice piece of work. No one in Hong Kong needed anything as obvious as that told to them. It was, quite simply, and everyone knew it, punishment to the daughter-in-law for trying to keep her missing husband's money from the 94 year old man.
Have any of these misdeeds been solved by the police? Of course not.
That's crime and punishment in China.
Fred Roswold
posted by wingssail at 3:08 AM
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1 Comments:
check out this picture from china
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