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Introduction: Toward an Analytical Framework of Understanding the Context and Content of Policing

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Book cover The Politics of Policing in Greater China

Part of the book series: Politics and Development of Contemporary China ((PDCC))

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Abstract

Although the scope of policing differs in these four places, the main question for us to answer is how the police forces have been responding to the rapidly changing socio-economic and political circumstances. If police forces can be regarded as the instrument of the states and city-states to maintain law and order, their internal development and responses to external challenges remain the indicators for us to comprehend the dynamic relationships between policing and politics. From a systemic perspective, the People’s Republic of China has a far more paternalistic state than the Republic of China on Taiwan, where the pluralistic and democratic state tolerates a relatively strong political opposition and mass media critical of the government in power. The one-party rule in mainland China is very different from the rotation of political power in Taiwan, where the island republic underwent three rotations of the political party in power: the change from the Kuomintang (KMT) presidential administration to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) led by Chen Shui-bian in 2004, the return of Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT to presidency in 2008, and then the alternation back to the DPP presidency under Tsai Ying-wen in 2016. The gradual democratization of Taiwan in the 1980s and its democratic consolidation since the 1990s have forced the police to adapt to all socio-political transformations. The police in Hong Kong, unlike their counterparts in mainland China and Macao, have experienced democratization since the 1990s. Their adaptation to the socioeconomic and politicized circumstances has become necessary since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region on July 1, 1997.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    John R. Brewer, Adrian Guelke, Ian Hume, Edward Moxon-Browne and Rick Wilford, The Police, Public Order and the State (London: Macmillan, 1996), “Introduction to the Second Edition,” pp. xiii–xxxi.

  2. 2.

    Brewer, Guelke, Hume, Moxon-Browne and Wilford, The Police, Public Order and the State, p. xxii.

  3. 3.

    Ibid., p. xxi.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., p. xxi.

  5. 5.

    Ibid., p. xxi.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., p. xxi.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., p. xxiii.

  8. 8.

    For details, see David Easton, “An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems,” World Politics, vol. 9, no. 3 (April 1957), pp. 383–400.

  9. 9.

    Peter K. Manning, Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing (Illinois: Waveland Press, 1997), pp. 129–179.

  10. 10.

    Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, The Politics of Cross-Border Crime in Greater China: Case Studies of Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2009).

  11. 11.

    Malcolm Anderson, Policing the World: Interpol and the Politics of International Police Cooperation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 151.

  12. 12.

    Ibid.

  13. 13.

    Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, The Politics of Controlling Organized Crime in Greater China (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 9–10.

  14. 14.

    Gary W. Cordner, “Community Policing: Elements and Effects,” in Gary W. Cordner, Larry K. Gaines, and Victor E. Kappeler, Police Operations: Analysis and Evaluations (Cincinnati, Ohio: Anderson Publishing Company, 1996), pp. 495–521.

  15. 15.

    William Lyons, The Politics of Community Policing: Rearranging the Power to Punish (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002), p. 8.

  16. 16.

    Peter K. Manning, Organizational Communication (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1992), pp. 162–163.

  17. 17.

    Peter K. Manning, Policing Contingencies (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), p.4.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., pp. 4–5.

  19. 19.

    For the argument that the police need to be both reactive and proactive in dealing with “serious crimes,” see Mark H. Moore, Robert C. Trojanowicz and George L. Kelling, “Crime and Policing,” in Gary W. Cordner, Larry K. Gaines and Victor E. Kappeler, eds., Police Operations: Analysis and Evaluations (Cincinnati, Ohio: Anderson Publishing Company, 1996), p. 4.

  20. 20.

    Tara Lai Quinlan and Zin Derfoufi, “Counter-Terrorism Policing,” in Rebekah Delsol and Michael Shiner, eds., Stop and Search: The Anatomy of a Police Power (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 123.

  21. 21.

    Manning, Policing Contingencies, p. 15.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., p. 11.

  23. 23.

    John L. Lambert, Police Powers and Accountability (London: Croom Helm, 1986).

  24. 24.

    Leonard Ruchelman, Police Politics: A Comparative Study of Three Cities (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1974), p. 1.

  25. 25.

    John A. Eterno, “Zero Tolerance Policing in Democracies: The Dilemma of Controlling Crime Without Increasing Police Abuse of Power,” in Darren Palmer, Michael M. Berlin, Dilip K. Das, eds., Global Environment of Policing (London: CRC Press, 2012), pp. 49–73.

  26. 26.

    Samuel Walker and Carol A. Archbold, The New World of Police Accountability (London: Sage, 2014), p. 8.

  27. 27.

    Peter K. Manning, Democratic Policing in a Changing World (Boulder: Paradigm, 2010), p. 45.

  28. 28.

    Jeffrey S. Slovak, Styles of Urban Policing: Organization, Environment, and Police Styles in Selected American Cities (New York: New York University Press, 1986), p. 8.

  29. 29.

    Helene Maria Kyed and Peter Albrecht, “Introduction: Policing and the politics of order-making on the urban margins,” in Peter Albrecht and Helene Maria Kyed, eds., Policing and the Politics of Order-Making (London: Routledge, 2015), p. 15.

  30. 30.

    David H. Bayley, Changing the Guard: Developing Democratic Policing Abroad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 17–22.

  31. 31.

    David H. Bayley, “The Limits of Police Reform,” in David H. Bayley, ed., Police and Society (London: Sage, 1977), pp. 219–220.

  32. 32.

    David H. Bayley and Clifford D. Shearing, “The Future of Policing,” Law & Society Review, vol. 30, no. 3. (1996), p. 585.

  33. 33.

    Manning, Democratic Policing in a Changing World, p. 44.

  34. 34.

    Karl Bunger, “Foreword: The Chinese State between Yesterday and Tomorrow,” in Stuart R. Schram, ed., The Scope of State Power in China (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1985), p. xvii.

  35. 35.

    Jacques Gernet, “Introduction,” in Schram, ed., The Scope of State Power in China, p. xxxii.

  36. 36.

    Tilemann Grimm, “State and Power in Juxtaposition: An Assessment of Ming Despotism,” in Schram, ed., The Scope of State Power in China, p. 37.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., p. 38.

  38. 38.

    Lo, The Politics of Controlling Organized Crime in Greater China, pp. 18–19.

  39. 39.

    Soft authoritarianism is here defined as a regime occasionally suppressing political dissidents and oppositionists. For details, see Edwin Winckler, “Institutionalization and Participation on Taiwan: From Hard to Soft Authoritarianism?,” China Quarterly, no. 99 (September 1984).

  40. 40.

    See the website of the Ministry of Public Security, http://www.mps.gov.cn/n16/index.html?_v=1455035435142, access date: February 10, 2016.

  41. 41.

    Ma Haijian, Zhongguo Zhencha Zhuti Zhidu (China’s Investigative Main System) (Beijing: Law Press, March 2011), p. 75.

  42. 42.

    Ibid.

  43. 43.

    See National Police Agency: Central Police Organization, http://www.npa.gov.tw/NPAGip/wSite/ct?xItem=72874&ctNode=12790, access date: December 4, 2015.

  44. 44.

    Lo, The Politics of Controlling Organized Crime in Greater China, Chapter 3, pp. 60–81. Also see Chin Ko-lin, Heijin: Organized Crime, Business, and Politics in Taiwan (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2003).

  45. 45.

    See “Force Vision, Common Purpose and Values: Hong Kong Police Force,” in http://www.police.gov.hk/ppp_en/01_about_us/vm.html, access date: December 4, 2015.

  46. 46.

    Mission of the Fire Services Department of the HKSAR Government, in http://www.hkfsd.gov.hk/eng/mission.html, access date: February 11, 2016.

  47. 47.

    Mission of the Correctional Services Department of the HKSAR Government, in http://www.csd.gov.hk/english/about/about_vmv/abt_vis.html, access date: February 11, 2016.

  48. 48.

    Mission of the Customs and Excise Department of the HKSAR Government, in http://www.customs.gov.hk/en/about_us/vision/index.html, access date: February 11, 2016.

  49. 49.

    Mission of the Immigration Department of the HKSAR Government, in http://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/about-us/mission.html, access date: February 11, 2016.

  50. 50.

    Ibid.

  51. 51.

    “Macao Public Security Police: Mission and Values,” in http://www.fsm.gov.mo/psp/cht/psp_org_7.html, access date: December 4, 2015.

  52. 52.

    See http://www.customs.gov.mo/cn/mission.html#mission, access date: April 10, 2016.

  53. 53.

    For the work of the Macao Fire Services, see http://www.fsm.gov.mo/cb/about, access date: April 10, 2016.

  54. 54.

    Judiciary Police, in http://www.pj.gov.mo/main_all.htm, access date: February 12, 2016.

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  1. Department of Social Sciences, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo

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Lo, S.SH. (2016). Introduction: Toward an Analytical Framework of Understanding the Context and Content of Policing. In: The Politics of Policing in Greater China. Politics and Development of Contemporary China. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39070-7_1

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