Security blankets Beijing for China parliament
Source: Reuters
By Lindsay Beck BEIJING, March 4 (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of police and their volunteer helpers blanketed Beijing on Sunday to help ensure China's annual parliament session runs smoothly and to ward off any dissent that could mar the two-week talking shop. Leaders from around the country descended on Beijing for the meeting to open on Monday that aims to address problems ranging from pollution to corruption but also highlights the gulf between China's rulers and its people. Most Chinese have no idea who their representative is, and many profess to have no interest in a meeting they see as far removed from their daily lives. "I don't really follow the issues," said a 21-year-old biochemistry student surnamed Wu. Yin Mei, 28, says that since she began working in an education management company last year she has started to become more interested in the policies that might affect her work. "I started to pay attention a lot more from last year, especially to what they say on education," she said. But despite following the issues in the newspaper, her new interest in politics has not brought her any closer to her representative, whom she cannot name and has no contact with. "We don't have that kind of opportunity," she said. Indeed, China takes elaborate measures to keep those with grievances away from the leaders inside the Great Hall of the People, the Soviet-era monolith that looms over Tiananmen Square. HALF A MILLION VOLUNTEERS Beijing has mobilised half a million volunteers to patrol its neighbourhoods to ensure no "outstanding public security problems and accidents", and police will waive their days off, according to a notice issued by the Ministry of Public Security. On Sunday, police decked out in green rain slickers against a wet, spring snowfall were checking identification cards and rifling through bags of those from out of town whom they suspect of being among the petitioners from the provinces who flock to Beijing to seek redress from the central government. One cluster was engaged in a heated argument with police over a sheaf of materials they planned to distribute, while tourists ignored the melee and snapped pictures of each other outside the Forbidden City. The city was also being kept spick and span. Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po newspaper reported that about 3,000 people were mobilised to scrub railings and clean Tiananmen Square. Out-of-town cars were also restricted from entering Beijing. Online polls showed Chinese interested in a range of subjects at parliament, with one showing more than 90 percent of respondents felt environmental protection was "an urgent task" that should be dealt with immediately. Among those, a majority said they would rather have economic expansion at a rate slower than last year's 10.7 percent growth for the sake of the environment. Other hot topics flagged by respondents and Beijing residents were medical care, preparations for the 2008 Olympics and corruption, with China still investigating a pension fund scandal in Shanghai that netted the city's former Communist Party boss.
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