On the occasion of the fifth conference of EU police chiefs, the deputy head of the Central Anti-Crime Directorate of the State Police, prefect Antonino Cufalo, in the presence of the head of the State Police, prefect Alessandro Pansa, signed with the director general of the Department for international cooperation of the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China, Liao Jinrong (???), a memorandum of understanding aimed at carrying out joint patrols in tourist hotspots.
In truth, this is not a new idea: the first proposal in Europe in this sense was put forward in 2014 by the French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who wanted to carry out joint patrols with Chinese policemen in Paris, with a view to foster the sense of security of the increasingly important Chinese tourists. But the proposal was soon met with resistance from several Parisian advisers of the UMP (l'Union pour un mouvement populaire, which was then the party headed by Nicolas Sarkozy) and in the end nothing more came of it.
The objective of this collaboration was and is clearly to "reassure the Chinese tourist". Paris then, like Milan and Rome today, in fact, do not enjoy a good reputation in terms of security among Chinese tourists, who are aware that they have become the privileged prey of aggressive pickpockets and beggars, above all due to the large sums of cash they usually they bring with them. In 2015, thanks above all to the Milan Expo, Italy became a must and favorite destination for the three and a half million Chinese tourists visiting EU countries.
These are foreign tourists who on average spend the most money in our country (about 874 euros per day according to data from a 2014 Global Blue survey, an average that in Milan reaches 1.208 euros per day). Restrictions on foreign exchange are easily circumvented and major purchases are preferably made in cash. Many Chinese tourists know that their trip to Europe will be an unmissable opportunity for a shopping campaign (especially designer clothes and accessories) aimed at distributing gifts essential to maintaining one's social prestige once back home, hence the drive to go shopping of quality during one's tour of Europe is very high.
The attacks that hit Paris have made the Italian capitals of style, Milan and Rome in primis, all the more captivating. So in the first two weeks of May, the peak moment of Chinese presence in the two cities, for the first time agents of the Public Security Office of the People's Republic of China patrolled the streets and squares of a western country, specifically the tourist hotspots of Rome and Milan, alongside carabinieri and local policemen. Although they do not have "operational" tasks but only public relations with Chinese tourists, the four Chinese policemen sent to the field were suitably trained for their mission: at least two of them speak Italian quite well and all speak English fluently . An initiative "of a symbolic nature" that hit the mark, arousing pride and satisfaction among the Chinese visiting the two capitals, as well as among the many Chinese citizens residing permanently in Italy.
However, this initiative also invites reflection on some important issues that cross it "watermark". Let's start with a fact that perhaps has not been given much importance, at least not in the extensive media coverage of the initiative both in Italy and abroad, namely the fact that the activity for which the Department for International Cooperation of the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China in recent years is investigative and intelligence, not public relations. In fact, it tends to sign bilateral agreements aimed at identifying and extraditing Chinese citizens who have fled abroad with huge capital taken from the Chinese state.
For example, the famous tycoon Lai Changxing (protagonist of the tasty novel-reportage written by Oliver August in 2007), who fled from Xiamen to Fujian in the mid-2011s, then arrested in Canada and extradited to China in XNUMX, or Yu Zhendong, the 'former manager of the Kaiping branch of the Bank of China in Guangdong province, brought back to his homeland after four years on the run. Considering the attention that our investigative agencies have been paying for a few years now to the issue of money laundering and unlawful transfers of capital between Italy and China, perhaps it is not unrealistic to suppose that this first collaborative approach could be the prelude to agreements bilateral also in terms of combating organized crime.
With all the necessary precautions, we have already had the opportunity to argue that it would be appropriate to start a more stringent collaboration in this sense. Another aspect was instead at the center of a recent workshop held at the end of May at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan as part of the Cereu project - Countering extortion and racketeering in the EU, sponsored by the Transcrime research center of the Catholic University , by the Center for the study of democracy of Sofia and by the Insituto de ciencias forenses de la seguridad of the Autonomous University of Madrid, which dedicated an entire session to the theme of the victimization of Chinese citizens residing in Italy by criminal subjects, and not, engaged in predatory and extortion activities.
On that occasion, one of the panel's most authoritative speakers, former State Police inspector Bruno Aricò, commented that, beyond image initiatives, what is above all necessary for an effective fight against the most serious crimes within the Chinese reality of Italy - the creation of "ethnic" drug markets by youth gangs dedicated to the sale of synthetic narcotic substances, the laundering of money earned thanks to illicit trafficking (illegal trafficking, illegally imported goods, counterfeiting, prostitution, gambling), etc. – is a greater commitment in the sense of specific linguistic and intercultural training of agents and of real international cooperation between investigative agencies, starting with the bodies mainly responsible for it, such as Interpol and Europol, which to date still do not seem to be able to express the sensitivity and reactivity necessary to allow rapid and effective coordinated actions.
Aricò, lead investigator of the special unit dedicated to combating Chinese crime in Milan in the 2010s and early XNUMXs, is something of a legend for those who deal with these issues: a veteran of the lead years who began to study the Chinese and to devour the criminological and sociological literature of reference to better understand the Chinese reality of Milan. A reality that he then got to know in depth through intense and extensive work in the field, cultivating networks of personal contacts, dialoguing with the complex galaxy of associations of immigrant entrepreneurs, managing informants and collaborators with justice who proved to be decisive for the rapid resolution of many cases in the Milanese crime news with Chinese offenders and victims.
The problem, underlines Aricò, however, is to make these activities systematic, not to leave them to the initiative of the single agent or investigator. We need farsightedness and seriousness, we need to understand that in today's Italy (and even more in tomorrow's) the Chinese minority will indeed be a stable component of society, but it won't necessarily be all made up of people perfectly capable of understanding and speaking the Italian. Rather than "importing" PRC agents, it would therefore be worthwhile to recruit Italian or Sino-Italian agents who are fluent in Chinese, who know "our" Chinese well, or who are actively committed to
get to know them closely.
And this leads to the final consideration, inevitable in the aftermath of a new striking episode of "Chinese revolt". The scuffles between entrepreneurs and Chinese leather goods workers in the Osmannoro district in Sesto Fiorentino on 29 June (to which we will return shortly) appear to have been triggered by the rapid degeneration of an ASL inspection into a heated dispute between the parties. In the intense exchange of opinions, videos, comments and appeals to protest unleashed on Chinese social media in Italy, what dominates above all - as already in Milan almost ten years ago - is the acute perception of feeling like a target as a minority, of being subject to arbitrarily selective... in short, what in the United States would be called ethnic profiling.
Being the object of attention from the institutions and the forces of order more for one's ethnic identity than for what one is actually doing. There are no decisive elements to be able to establish whether this is actually the case: it would be necessary to compare the data on the checks by the Local Health Authority, the Guardia di Finanza, the State Police, the Carabinieri and the Municipal Police in the territories considered and disaggregate them by ethnicity of the subjects checked, the number of checks, the quantity and onerousness of the fines imposed, the seizure of machinery, the closure of activities, etc. But almost thirty years of research on immigration in Italy and on the interactions between institutions and immigrant citizens converge in highlighting how the relational pragmatics between Italian agents or public officials (with very rare exceptions, always "white" Europeans) and Chinese citizens of faced with the first difficulties or frictions ("pretend not to understand", "you don't understand what he's saying", "look how these people live/work", "stop shouting" etc.) you often and easily degrade from the "courteous" dialectic but firm" of the normal relationship between public official and citizen to a brutal colonial-based self-confidence, which pits the representatives of a dominant "civilizing" and hegemonic majority against a subordinate and inferiorized minority.
A visit to the foreigners counter of the nearest police station (or registry office, emergency room, etc.) is enough to verify the sad pervasiveness of these attitudes in the field. A legacy stubbornly long-lived and deeply rooted in the subconscious of our country, because it has never really been questioned. A real postcolonial critique of the language, of the social representations and of the communicative pragmatics of our institutions is still the prerogative of a few academics and still fails to give any push to the renewal of the collective narratives of the contemporary world, nor does it inform training paths or of self-reflection initiated internally by the public institutions themselves.
