Old Ladies Keep Peace in Beijing’s Alleys

For the old women of Peace Mile, honor lies in one-child families achieved, political deviants routed and drunken thugs subdued.

The women of the Beijing district are members of China’s army of 9 million neighborhood minders--individuals who keep watch day and night, 365 days a year, over almost every urban home.

Beijing wits irreverently call them the “small-footed inspection squads” because many of the women hobble about on tiny feet, bound during childhood in an ancient Chinese custom.

But that is where the jokes end. Such “neighborhood committees” have real power.

The women, some volunteers and some who are paid a modest wage, are charged with enforcing China’s “one-child” family planning policy, reporting on job-seeking school dropouts, patching up marital disputes and rooting out anti-government “elements.”

The committees have been extra vigilant since last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations, posing the most serious challenge to 40 years of communist authority, were crushed by military force in Beijing last June.

“We love the country, the people and the Communist Party,” Yao Jinlan, head of a neighborhood committee in Peace Mile, said in a recent interview.

“Of course, we have heightened our vigilance since the turmoil (last year),” added Yao, a 60-year-old former factory worker.

An official from China’s Ministry of Public Security was recently quoted in the official media as saying that there are some 9 million members of “grass-roots” neighborhood committees nationwide.

The latest edition of the official Beijing Review said that some 100,000 committees watched over the affairs of China’s 200 million urban citizens.

To the unaccustomed eye, the minders look like elderly people watching the world go by, perched on stools near the entrance to apartment buildings or at vantage points in Beijing’s warren of residential alleys.

But they are empowered to report political dissidents, delinquents and any other miscreants to the police. Smaller misdemeanors earn fines.

Yao rules the roost over 2,345 people living in 734 Peace Mile households. Directly under her are 69 “activists,” all retired people.

Under the activists are “apartment and courtyard watchers”--60 more elderly people deployed throughout the neighborhood as trouble-spotters.

“We are not afraid to die,” said Lu Jingding, 52, security chief at Peace Mile. “We must guard the stability of our neighborhood.”

Lu related how her leader, Yao, had been decorated as a “Beijing city crime prevention activist of the second class” for courage beyond the call of duty in breaking up a fight between two intoxicated “ruffians.”

“One ruffian had a knife and the other an iron bar and they were fighting,” said Lu. “Old Yao forced herself in between them and they stopping fighting. They made a television film about it.”

Yao is proud of her neighborhood’s record. When more than a million people took to the streets of Beijing last year to demonstrate for democracy, not one of them was from Yao’s neighborhood.

“We identified potential troublemakers and went round to their places to persuade them not to go out onto the streets,” she said. “We all know that if it was not for the Communist Party we would all starve.”

Persuasion is the tactic when women get pregnant with an unauthorized second child or two people in their early 20s wish to marry or a couple wants to have a baby immediately after marriage.

“We have had a 100% record on one-child families,” she said. “And a 100% record on late marriages and a 100% record on late births.”

There was one “stubborn” woman who resisted persuasion to have her baby aborted, Yao said, but she eventually came around. Fines amounting to 10% of income for about 10 years are part of the means of persuasion.

Activists patch up marital disputes in their role as counselors. Housing is cramped in most Chinese cities, so bouts of yelling and plate-throwing can disturb neighbors, said Lu.