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Shanghai: racist rhetoric in building's Olympic security warning
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by julianw | July 24, 2008 at 04:47 pm
411 views | 14 Recommendations | 7 comments
From the blog at Shanghaiist.com comes an interesting glimpse into the culture of China's state security. Shanghaiist obtained an Olympic security document posted publicly in Tomorrow Square, the fifth-tallest building in Shanghai and the home of the Marriott hotel. The document, as Shanghaiist explains, targets three ethnic groups as security threats.
We looked through the rest of the document and found most of the measures to be pretty standard ones like what you should do if you see a suspicious-looking package but the following two did strike us as being unnecessarily, erm, racist:
Whenever anyone that can be identified as "Tibetans", "Xinjiang Uyghurs" and "Qinghai Hualong Hui's" enters the building, please report them to the security department. Security guards will persuade them to leave the building, or follow them till they do so.
During the Olympic period, Tomorrow Square will reduce the number of exits and entrances according to the safety requirements. For now, we have provisionally decided to close the side door next to Starbucks in order to prevent Tibetan street hawkers and unauthorised individuals from entering the building. [Note: The term used to refer to 'unauthorised individuals', "社会闲杂人" could also be understood as "social undesirables" within the context.]
We doubt Tomorrow Square's security department received clearance from their corporate communications department before posting this up. Anyone seen similar "safety measures“ in your building?
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (7)
at 17:33 on July 24th, 2008
The PRC Identity card, mandatory to have on you at all times as a PRC Citizen states your ethnicity : not always a bad thing, for example, colleagues tell me that a minority ethnicity (that is to say not Han) entitles you to many benefits such as exception from the 1 child policy.
So how to explain why this feels so uncomfortable to me, but not at all for my Chinese colleagues? Its simply this - the greater good, the good of the whole always trumps the good of the individual - that is a deep cultural difference between how I look at the world and how my hosts do - there is no right or wrong here - just different.
at 17:34 on July 24th, 2008
julianw, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 18:09 on July 24th, 2008
This is fairly similar to what goes on with foreigners during normal times. If the security staff of a building does not know you, you will be questioned and asked to leave or followed until you do. Unless of course you arrived on invitation from a business or department within the building, in which case one phone call will make it stop.
While I can understand why some people would be uncomfortable with this racial profiling, the country's main security threats ARE the East Turkistan movement in Xinjiang and the handful Dalai Lama extremists in Tibet (I believe most Dalai Lama supporters are not violent extremists). In the US, if someone says he was robbed by a 35-year-old white man with red hair, you don't go looking for an 86-year-old black man with white hair.
I think the "hawkers" mentioned in the story are the jewelry peddlers. You often see them come out and unfold a big yellow blanket full of overpriced trinkets. At least in Beijing, no ethnicity is "allowed" to do this. The chengguan are supposed to chase them away and confiscate their pitches.
Is it unfair they are being temporarily targetted? Yes. But on the other hand, the only innocent people this will affect are the ones who are loitering in buildings or operating a street business without license.
at 18:20 on July 24th, 2008
An interesting piece.
at 21:41 on July 24th, 2008
China's Olympic Racist Games
at 00:53 on July 25th, 2008
julianw, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 08:30 on July 30th, 2008
They don't want to have the level of crime the west has because we don't want to race-ident. We pretend most of the street crime isn't by blacks and tell ourselves we are tolerant and loving. And the killings and thieving go on. As long as it isn't in 'our' neighbourhood. I don't see how that is any better.