Not wanting another Tiananmen Square debacle so close to the Chink-O-
Lympics, the Yellow Horde this time is "restraining" its military
thugs and employing its 700,000 goon-strong PAP to shoot and club
dissident Tibetans into submission.
Make no mistake, the PAP is just an army by another name. Besides de
facto communist Russia, what other nation has a 700,000-person "police
force"?
Its job is to quell riots -- and murder and maim enough countrymen and
women to bring Tibet -- or any other complainants -- into line with
the Commies in BROWNISH BEIJING.
The PAP is used these days for puni****ng free-speech advocates because
the fat-and happy rulers back in the poisonous and putrid capital cess
pool want to keep the hated, violent, criminal, laughably-named
People's Liberation Army ( PLA) out of the headlines for this
particular beat-in.
-------------------------------
"Backstage Role of China's Army in Tibet Unrest Is a Contrast to 1989'
"Use of Police Reflects Heed for Reaction Abroad, Analysts Say"
By Edward Cody
Wa****ngton Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 13, 2008; A17
BEIJING -- As Chinese security forces blanketed Tibet and other
Tibetan-inhabited areas over the past month, the regular army remained
discreetly in the background, under orders to let police take the lead
in suppressing the unrest that exploded in Lhasa and quickly spread to
adjoining provinces.
The backstage role played by the People's Liberation Army marked a
sharp change from China's last big protests, in 1989. During that
crisis, PLA troops using tanks and automatic weapons moved in to quell
rioting in Tibet and crush pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing's
Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed
civilians.
The decision to minimize military intervention this time suggested
that the Communist Party leader****p did not consider the Tibet crisis
to be as serious as the 1989 protests, when China's entire ruling
system was thought to be under challenge. Analysts here also saw the
recent lower-key response as reflecting official concern over the
reaction abroad if the army were to deploy massively against internal
unrest as China prepares to host the Beijing Olympics in August.
The main task of restoring order was assigned to the Public Security
Bureau and particularly the People's Armed Police, a paramilitary
force of about 700,000 men and women with duties that include
protecting embassies and putting down riots. The People's Armed Police
has grown considerably in numbers, equipment and training in recent
years. Commanded jointly by military and public security authorities,
it has most often been called out by provincial party leaders facing
unrest in their areas.
The failure of the People's Armed Police to swiftly bring rioting
Tibetans under control March 14 in Lhasa, when 19 people were killed
by official count at the beginning of the unrest, generated criticism
from army officers whose units were told to stay in their barracks,
according to re****ts circulating among Beijing political analysts. But
the carping was more a symptom of routine interservice rivalry than a
serious rift, the re****ts said.
Neither the Defense Ministry nor the civilian security apparatus,
headed by Zhou Yongkang on the Politburo's Standing Committee, would
comment on deployments of recent weeks. Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman, said no soldiers were deployed in Lhasa but declined to
comment on other Tibetan areas. Re****ters who visited Tibet and the
other areas where unrest broke out said they saw People's Armed
Police, sometimes carrying automatic rifles and dressed in military-
style camouflage fatigues, but mostly armed with crowd-control batons.
The ****ft in approach by President Hu Jintao and his Communist Party
lieutenants reflected political sensitivities that still surround
memories of 1989, when public esteem for the army suffered after it
moved against its own people.
The party Propaganda Bureau has worked tirelessly since then to
restore the military's image and ****tray it as devoted to China's 1.3
billion inhabitants. The effort was particularly visible during this
past winter's ice storms, when state-controlled media inundated
Chinese with photos of smiling soldiers clearing snow and grateful
citizens handing them snacks and hot tea.
Hu and his premier, Wen Jiabao, both had prominent roles in the 1989
resort to the military, which may be coloring their attitudes now. Hu
was party secretary in Tibet during the crackdown and imposed martial
law there to give soldiers a freer hand. Wen, a rising star in 1989,
was photographed just behind a senior party leader, Zhao Ziyang, as
Zhao tried in vain to persuade students to leave Tiananmen Square
before the army attacked.
"The decision to primarily, if not exclusively, rely on the PAP is one
consequence of the 1989 Tiananmen crisis," said David L. Shambaugh,
who heads the China Policy Program at George Wa****ngton University and
just finished a book on the Chinese Communist Party. "That is, neither
the party leader****p nor the PLA itself wanted to put the military
into the position of riot suppression."
In addition, the Chinese government is in the midst of a long-term
program to improve the 2.2 million-member military, including making
it more professional and capable of waging modern, electronics-based
warfare. Spending, which rose more than 15 percent in each of the past
two years, has brought in new weaponry but also financed training and
education to enable soldiers to use the more sophisticated equipment.
The Chinese military's mission has long focused strongly on Taiwan,
the self-ruled island just off southern China, and on China's growing
need as a major regional power to project strength around the Pacific.
Riot suppression fits poorly into either mission, analysts pointed
out, and so the People's Armed Police has been expanded and improved
to take care of internal security needs.
In that vein, Hu recently told senior People's Armed Police officers
that their mission of providing internal security was the top priority
for a successful Beijing Olympics, according to the force's official
newspaper.
Hu and other party leaders also are eager to avoid being seen as
turning to the military for help, a Beijing-based analyst said,
because that could create a political debt to the military leader****p.
"This is more than just image," the analyst added, speaking on the
condition of anonymity.
Hu, who was too young to be part of the 1930s and 1940s military
struggle that brought the party to power, has taken over as head of
the party's decision-making Central Military Commission but is still
cementing his position as commander in chief. He has named a number of
new generals, making them beholden to his leader****p, but is still
surrounded on the 11-member commission by officers and others whose
experience dates to the previous presidency of Jiang Zemin.
Although Hu has taken to being photographed in a green uniform at
military events to underline his command role, the analyst said, he
would be reluctant to allow his party leader****p to be seen as
depending on the military for national stability.
The army has played an im****tant political role in China since the
Communist Party took over in 1949. Mao Zedong's victory over Chiang
Kai-shek's Nationalist forces was attained through conventional war,
not an underground sedition campaign, giving the military a platform
for strong influence. In addition, after Mao's death in 1976, the
military leader****p stepped in to save the country from chaos provoked
by the renegade Communist leaders known as the Gang of Four.
Andrei Chang, an analyst who runs the Toronto-based Kanwa Defense
Review, said in a recent study that the party increasingly has sought
to assert civilian leader****p despite the military tradition.
Nonetheless, he noted, PLA officers account for 20 percent of the 204
Central Committee members installed at the 17th National Congress in
October.
Chang and other analysts said that the PLA was not entirely absent in
the recent security operations in Tibet. They cited photographs
circulating on the Internet that they said show a small number of PLA
troops in armored personnel carriers in Lhasa after the March 14
riots. The armored vehicles, some tracked, others wheeled, had their
identifying insignia covered with paper or cloth, they noted,
suggesting the military was trying to obscure whatever role it played
in the Tibetan capital.
Another qualified military analyst, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, said the army troops may have been called out to be on hand
in case rioting escalated, to intimidate protesters by making the
armored vehicles visible and to ferry People's Armed Police personnel
safely into neighborhoods where Tibetans were throwing stones.
Townspeople in Zhongdian, a Tibetan-inhabited region of Yunnan
province, re****ted seeing PLA trucks pass through carrying soldiers,
apparently on the way to reinforce regular garrisons in Tibet. But
security forces in their own town, they said, were all People's Armed
Police and regular Public Security Bureau police.
Similarly, about 200 People's Armed Police personnel in camouflage
fatigues and military helmets were seen protecting Princess Bridge on
the edge of Kangding, in the Tibetan-inhabited hills of central
Sichuan province, but no regular troops were spotted.
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article.2008/04/12/AR2008041202215.html
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