Uneven Resources and Manpower Concerns

Abstract

This chapter looks more deeply at the effects of police budget and other resource limitations to argue that many areas of policing fall short, even as protest control excels. It recounts frontline stories and interprets them with the intent of establishing a more complete picture of what policing in China is, as well as what it is not. The chapter reveals that pay is low, overtime goes unpaid, and stations do not have enough qualified officers on the front lines to manage current workloads. Improvements in funding, training, and technology have also failed to keep pace with increases in crime, citizen demands, and central government hiring limits for civil service employees. The chapter uncovers what resource limitations look like on the ground. It assesses the impact of allocation decisions at the station level to the ground-level police, and examines how stations manage manpower and financial resources. Going beyond the budget figures, the chapter shows how ground-level police experience resource limitations and how these shortfalls affect their ability to respond to crime in Chinese cities.