The Reform of Policing in China: Continuities and Discontinuities Under New Challenges

This analysis approaches the problem of policing in China, rendering focus on the process of policing reform not isolated in itself but rather embedded in the social context. The study allows for the envisage of the complexity implied in the broader institutional reform setting in China from 1978 to the present day. Continuities and discontinuities in relation to some past practices are the stakes of this phenomenon. As new normative and legal measures might offer some restraints to the “rule of men”, policing reform is followed tentatively by the Chinese Communist Party authorities. This process is oriented towards a discrete and gradual – but not inexorable – abandonment of essentially ideologically driven practices within institutions of social control. The idea which has guided this research is that the modification in both the organization and the operational policing practices in China was necessary to deal with the ongoing broader reforms the country has been faced with.