As of year-end, an army of over a million Chinese volunteers (the numbers are always large in China) will patrol the streets of the capital, in the 2633 districts of Beijing, and he will kindly rebuke anyone who misbehaves: spitting in the street, throwing away cigarette butts or tissues, or any other example of non-civil conduct (the boundary between civil and non-civil is not clear, and it is supposed to be left to the good judgment of the volunteers).
This particular troop is organized by the municipality and is not a duplication of the police (which also has the right and duty to counter harmful behavior). In a Chinese version of the good-cop/bad-cop, the volunteers are distinguished from the police because they have to use only the velvet glove and cannot resort to the iron hand.
The experiment is interesting - try to channel the ferment of democracy into civic support activities which continues to simmer in a regime that remains authoritarian.
Read the news on China Daily
