The year ahead will challenge Chinese security officials increasingly nervous about social stability, the nation’s top police officer said, amid concerns about gang violence, separatism and dissident plans to mark the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.
Leaders are particularly anxious about how the cooling economy, and the accompanying loss of jobs, will affect social order.
“The present situation of maintaining national security and social stability is grave,” Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu warned leading officers in Beijing, official state media reported Tuesday.
Meng called for specific measures to head off disruptions during Oct. 1 celebrations to mark 60 years of communist rule.
The anniversary is one of at least three sensitive dates that opponents of the authoritarian regime could seize on as symbolically rich opportunities to stage demonstrations or issue calls for political reform.
“I worry a social crisis is highly possible in 2009,” Yang Fengchun, a political scientist at Peking University’s School of Government.
Joblessness will compound simmering dissatisfaction among the poor over corruption, abysmal public services, and the yawning gap between rich and poor, Yang said. The children of migrants, unused to rural life, could be a particular source of instability if left without schools or jobs, he said.
The flight of foreign investment, deflation, falling pay, and bankruptcies, already have led to the loss of 10 million jobs, the official magazine Outlook Weekly reported this month, citing government statistics.
It said November saw a near doubling of numbers of migrants working in Beijing involved in pay disputes.
Many Chinese have been willing to accept single-party rule and curbs to their civil liberties as long as the leadership delivers steady economic growth; there are fears that a downturn could spark widespread unrest.
Growing joblessness has been linked to a spike in gang crimes, prompting the Ministry of Public Security to announce last month the creation of a division focused on organized prostitution, gambling, drug production and trafficking