Xi takes sole command of elite police force as he strengthens grip on power

The People’s Armed Police force is the latest link in the ­chain of key organisations to fall under Xi Jinping’s control.

Pedestrians walk by a poster of Chinese President Xi Jinping on a street in Beijing. Picture: AP

The vast People’s Armed Police force is the latest link in the ­Chinese chain of key organisations to come under the personal control of President Xi Jinping.

Members of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress — China’s politicians — have been handed a bill to shift control of the PAP, the country’s prime domestic security force, away from the State Council or cabinet.

The force will become solely accountable to Mr Xi as chairman of the Central Military Commission that formerly shared that responsibility with the State Council that leads the government side of China’s power structure.

PAP commander Wang Ning told the leaders: “The priority of the reform is to enhance the centralised and unified leadership of the Communist Party of China and the Central Military Commission, and implement the principle of the CMC chairman taking charge.”

He said shortly before the ­recent party congress that “we should give to Mr Xi our unique, complete, unconditional, pure and absolute loyalty”.

The force was created in 1982 by the merger of the disciplined services responsible for border control, domestic security and firefighting. The green-uniformed guards outside foreign embassies and consulates, and all strategic sites including railway and subway stations and airports, are PAP officers.

Its role was boosted, and its size expanded, following the massacre in central Beijing and killings elsewhere around the country in mid-1989, when the People’s Liberation Army was brought in to end protests in Tiananmen Square and in other cities.

The popular reputation of the PLA, which has always explicitly been the party’s army, suffered a hit because of its deployment against peaceful demonstrators.

To guard the PLA’s reputation as the “people’s army”, it was ­decided to reserve its use for external defence and domestic disaster relief.

The PAP thus stepped up, and its resources were bolstered, as it had to suppress a growing number of “mass incidents” — triggered by labour disputes, forced land acquisitions and home demolitions, ­environmental disasters, and ­alleged repression of ethnic groups — that reached an official total of almost 100,000 in a year, throughout China.

Since then, seven years ago, no official figures have been released.

The force comprises about 1.5 million officers, organised with a military-style ranking system similar to that of the PLA. During a war, the PAP would serve as a PLA auxiliary force.

It was originally placed under the dual party-state command structure because as “mass incidents” began to multiply, it was perceived to be important to ­enable local governments to direct rapid PAP deployments.

The State Council, to which all such government bodies are ultimately accountable, devolved such authority.

But now it is being taken back by the party, whose overall control of Chinese institutions is being ­reinforced under Mr Xi.

The rapidly centralising leadership was alarmed that the two most powerful “tigers” jailed for life under the anti-corruption campaign launched by Mr Xi, Bo Xilai and Zhou Yngkang, both ­appeared to be able to command local PAP forces to do their bidding.

Mr Bo ordered PAP officers to pursue rogue police chief Wang Lijun in a 300km car chase as he fled from Chongqing to the American consulate in Chengdu.

Zi Yang wrote in the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief that the PAP “is positioned to survive another round of force ­reduction unscathed”, with some of the 200,000 PLA conventional soldiers who are starting to be laid off, being redeployed as PAP officers.

The PAP will become busier if China’s economic growth slows and social unrest rises.

But Mr Zi said the Central Military Commission that is taking over sole control of the force “is staffed with PLA ­officers trained in the art of war”, and lacks internal security expertise.