A knock on the door

A few weeks after I arrived in China, there was a late-afternoon knock on the door of our apartment. When I opened it, five people were standing there eyeballing me. The PSB. Two policemen in uniform, and three female officers in civvies. One of them taking my photo.

Uniform Number 1 asking if he can enter. "OK", I say. Then all five of them inserting themselves into our home. Looking around. My Chinese wife objecting to this intrusion: "What are you doing here, and why did you take a photo of my husband without asking permission?" No answer.

Uniform 1 asking if he can view my passport. The law says that I must comply with this request, so I fetch it. Meanwhile my wife produces our marriage certificate, and tells them that we own this property – just in case they are looking for an excuse to lean on us.

Facing him as I hand over my passport. Trying unsuccessfully to look him in the eye. He quickly checks my face against the passport photo, then searches for my visa but can't locate it. I take my passbook back and find the right page for him, confident that all is in order. He photographs the document with his smartphone.

My wife addressing the intruders again: asking why so many of them are here. Angry at their unstated suspicions. No response.

Uniform 1 handing my passport back to me. A female officer telling my wife that I should have registered my presence with the district PSB as soon as I arrived, and then applied for a foreigner's residency permit. OK, but I'm only here for two months and I have a family visa allowing me to stay for up to 180 days if I wish. This is a minor administrative matter, not a security issue requiring investigation by a PSB task force.

Anyway: how did the cops know I was on their patch, and how did they know where I lived? They had identified our gated community (one of many); knew which building we lived in (there are six); used an electronic pass to get inside (where did they get that personal security device from?); got the lift up to the 6th floor; and then knocked on door number 3 (ours).

My guess is that the security guards – who are employed by the management service, and who are supposed to protect the residents – reported to the Police that a foreigner was living inside, and collaborated with the raid.

Then the paranoia (Mine. A survival skill in China). Wondering about the unfriendliness of the folk who ran two small noodle restaurants adjacent to one side of the front gate. Elsewhere in China, they would have been smiling and saying hello as we walked past – hoping to attract our patronage. Not this sour-faced lot, though. Something was up.

My wife reflecting, then recalling that a shop-owner on the other side of the front gate, had asked her twice for the specific location of our apartment. An inappropriate request which was ignored. Perhaps the police had asked him to elicit this information.

Get the picture?

New faces in town. Many busy-bodies noticing the lone foreigner and gossiping about him, his attractive Chinese wife, and his reasons for being here. And the security guards who are supposed to be looking after him, ingratiating themselves with the authorities. A shameful cabal of racism and suspicion.

The Police – perhaps frightened of their own superiors – overreacting. Covering their arses just in case (for another example of PSB self-protective behaviour see; https://ozinchina.com/2009/08/16/51/).

You wonder what kind of slander was communicated to the local wallopers, and who directed the response – given that five officers were deployed to investigate what should have been a routine matter. Something that could have been dealt with via a note dropped in my letterbox or hand-delivered by a security guard, asking if I could come down to the station to sort something out. That's the way this kind of thing has been handled in the past.

Later, when my wife and I were returning from a visit to a store a couple of blocks away, we found the flatfoot-five hanging around a street-corner. Looking sheepish as we challenged them out in the open. My wife asking again why they had taken my photograph. The perpetrator meekly saying that she had deleted it. A lie of course.

Anyway: outside our home, they had the good grace to look embarrassed. Yet while projecting the power of State inside our home, they had presumed that we must have been guilty of something.

This is Xi Jinping's China.

Analysis: What was going on here?

Peasant anger. Our apartment is part of a huge new development project in semi-rural China. It is possible that the traditional landowners may not have been compensated fairly for the appropriation of their property by local government officials who then re-sold it to the developers. Anyway, if they had resisted, they would have been forcibly removed by the Police who are controlled by the local government. These dislocated peasants – who provide the menial services here – may have been seeking revenge against outsiders who bought apartments in the modern housing complexes built on their old village plots. And you can't get more 'outsider' status than being a foreigner. The Chinese term for foreigner: waiguoren, literally means: 'outside the country person.'

Racist suspicion. Racist suspicion of a waiguoren rather than say, financial jealousy of middle-class buyers from nearby Chengdu, is easier to indulge and spread. Further, a Chinese woman who is married to a foreigner can sometimes be regarded as a cultural traitor – particularly by uneducated people who have little knowledge of the outside world. Previous experience with police in Chongqing after I was robbed uncovered this prejudice which was held – surprisingly – by the female boss of the station. It is possible that racist suspicion lay at the heart of this shameful episode.

Geopolitics. Trump's trade war and the 5G issue have provoked a Xi Jinping directed increase in anti-Western propaganda. People are being reminded of the century of humiliation when Western powers and Japan carved out their own spheres of influence in China, and forced it to negotiate unequal treaties with her enemies. My guess is that Xi Jinping is ramping up Western bad-guy propaganda in the hope that he will not be held responsible for any economic downturn, tradewar-caused or not. Naturally, this posture filters down the descending layers of bureaucracy until it reaches those functionaries at the bottom who just follow orders. For example: local police.

Conclusion

In my opinion, and based on lived experience in China since 2003, all three factors (above) could have contributed to the unwelcome knock on our door recently. The main player however, is the Chinese Communist Party – the unseen hand controlling everything.