China Taps Middle-Class Fear of Violent Crime : Politics: Beijing focuses state media on criminals and their victims in bid to gain support from more affluent urbanites.

Authorities in the Chinese capital are using the case of a slain policeman and his wounded partner to sound the alarm about urban lawlessness and violence here. But the campaign also carries a larger appeal for law and order, directed at the country’s emerging middle class, that is changing the shape of politics in China.

The shooting death last month of police officer Cui Daqing by a man wanted in eight other killings has been featured prominently in the Chinese press.

In a rare mass meeting, more than 30,000 people attended a memorial service for the officer in a suburban Beijing sports stadium. And the long funeral cortege to a hero’s burial for Cui at Babaoshan Cemetery was broadcast on national television.

Such orchestrated public attention to violent crime is something new in China. When a People’s Liberation Army officer went berserk in September, killing eight people and wounding 30 as he sprayed bullets into rush-hour traffic, it merited two lines in one Beijing newspaper.

China’s leaders long have used public trials--and highly public executions--to condemn certain offenses, such as corruption and theft of state property, that were seen as cancers on Communist power and authority. But now the official media are turning a similar spotlight on ordinary street crime affecting the lives of common people.

The flurry of stories about the slain police officer and other violence reflects growing public fear of crime. And it demonstrates the willingness of the Communist government to play off this fear as a political issue to win support from China’s relatively affluent urban populations.

In that respect, it is not unlike the use of law and order as a highly charged issue in the U.S. political scene. Critics of the Chinese regime worry that the law-and-order issue may work to divide pro-democratic segments of the population.

In an era of great disparities in wealth between urban and rural and between coastal and interior sections of the country, such developments become particularly important.

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After a decade of rapid growth, many urban Chinese families find themselves for the first time with something material to lose. At the same time, the huge influx of migrant laborers from China’s rural provinces--1.5 million in Beijing alone--has brought into the cities people desperate and poor enough to take it from them.

“Under the great social pressure of polarization,” Shanghai Normal University Prof. Xiao Gongqin wrote in an essay for the bimonthly Strategy and Management magazine, “the (migrant and unemployed populations) are experiencing very intense feelings of social setback and dissatisfaction that is the hotbed for the new social instabilities.”

Recently it has become fashionable among some of the country’s sociologists and political scientists to warn of widespread social disorder as the clash between China’s haves and have-nots intensifies.

Native Beijing residents say theft and petty crime, such as purse snatching, are particularly bad in the days before holidays, when migrant laborers are seeking money to go home to their families.

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Police in Beijing say their statistics show that 70% of all crime, including violent crime, is committed by this huge “floating population.”

Yuan Yue, a young law school graduate whose public-opinion polling company has conducted surveys of Beijing residents for each of the last three years, said public fear of crime has increased dramatically in recent years.

In a poll of 600 Beijing residents conducted in April, 1993, more than 55% of those interviewed said they felt safe in Beijing. But when a nearly identical poll was taken in November, 1994, the number of residents who said they felt “safe” or “very safe” had dropped to 45%.

In his initial polls, conducted by teams of students from five Beijing universities, Yuan said residents were asked: “Has your bicycle ever been stolen?”

Because bicycle theft has become so common, however, Yuan said this year the question was amended to ask: “How many times has your bicycle been stolen?”

In a poll of 350 business executives or company managers, public security ranked as the most important concern. In polls of the broader population, inflation and housing rated higher.

In recent months, there has been a markedly increased emphasis on crime in the government-controlled media.

During last month’s session of the National People’s Congress, China’s top prosecutor told delegates of a dramatic increase in serious crimes, including murder, rape, drug trafficking and organized crime.

Supreme People’s Procurator Zhang Siqing said crimes in those categories jumped 61.9% over the previous year.

The new emphasis on crime reporting is clear from stories televised recently on the national China Central Television evening news, the country’s most watched television program.

* On March 24, CCTV broadcast the funeral of Cui, the slain police officer.

* March 28, the network featured a report on the execution of two Communist Party officials for the murder of a farmer who had accused them of corruption.

* March 29, soldiers were honored for capturing a gang of thieves on a rural bus route.

* March 31, there were reports of the execution of a man accused of a bomb attack on a department store in Kunming in southern China.

* April 4, another ceremony was broadcast honoring slain officer Cui and showing the return home from the hospital of his wounded partner, Gan Lei.

* April 5, a public appeal was telecast to citizens to report crimes to their regional leaders.

* April 6, a report aired about eight men sentenced to death for killing three taxi drivers in Shanghai.

By far the most extensive press coverage, both on television and in newspapers, was for the killing of Cui. In part, this followed the Chinese tradition of selecting heroes to serve as role models for the general population.

In this case, the media attention probably was also designed to help boost the fallen public image of police officers.

In opinion surveys conducted by pollster Yuan in the city of Chengdu, public security officers ranked lowest among all public servants.

“People no longer trust policemen,” Yuan said in an interview. “There is a declining positive attitude toward them in the public. A few years ago they were respected. Now they see policemen as something associated with corruption.”

Cui was praised in the press for fearlessly rushing toward a gun-wielding criminal, taking a bullet in the head and still, while dying, attempting to wrestle the villain to the ground.

But just as important to the case as Cui was the accused gunman, 34-year-old Yu Ganzhu. In a China concerned about the influx of criminals from the countryside, Yu was the perfect anti-hero.

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Born in rural Shandong province, he had already served five years in prison and labor camps for theft and robbery.

According to the Beijing Youth Daily, Yu and his gang of hoodlums were suspected of eight murders, four armed robberies and 10 cases of theft.

“Yu will be severely punished,” the newspaper reported.

Justice was swift and sure. Yu was executed Tuesday with a bullet in the head.