A knock on the door

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.