An old man in Guangzhou shot by police ignites fears of a ramped up police state in the wake of the Zhuhai car ramming.

By Probe International

The street shooting of an elderly man in southern China’s Guangzhou city has raised fears that police powers and authority have expanded in response to a series of random acts of violence across the country in the past year.

Videos circulated online on November 19 showed police officers surrounding an old man with long white hair earlier that day. When the old man approached one officer with a knife, the policeman fired three shots before the man could draw close. Video footage showed the man was able to sit up at first after the gunfire had knocked him to the ground, but he eventually collapsed and was later removed from the scene, motionless, by ambulance. Netizens noted that officers did not appear to act with urgency to help him and questioned the severity of the actions taken given the man appeared to be in weak condition and presumably could have been overpowered. [See: A White-Haired Old Man in Guangzhou Was Shot by Police While Holding a Knife on the Street, Which Aroused Doubts].

In the wake of a car-ramming attack in Zhuhai, Guangdong on November 11, which killed 35 and injured dozens, President Xi Jinping called for the strict prevention of “extreme cases”. The Nov. 11 incident, described as the deadliest in decades, marked the latest entry in an ongoing series of shocking acts of violence to rock the country, including mass killings and attacks on schoolchildren, as well as foreigners.

Lynette Ong, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Toronto, told The Globe and Mail that she doubted the government had the capability to respond to such incidents with anything other than greater controls.

One such measure authorities are reported to be undertaking is akin to a pre-crime strategy: identifying the vulnerable based on a range of criteria divided into categories of varying concern and hardship. These categories, reports The Epoch Times, include the “four nothings,” “five losses” or “eight losses,” as well as the “three lows and three lesses”.

The “four nothings” refer to “no spouse and no children, no job and no stable income, no normal communication, and no assets such as houses and cars”. The “five losses” refer to “investment failure, frustration in life, relationship discord, psychological imbalance, and mental disorder”. The “eight losses” are “unemployment at work, emotional frustration, and loss of youth” in addition to the “five losses”. The “three lows and three lesses” refer to “low economic income, low power status, low social prestige, few interpersonal interactions, few opportunities for mobility, and few channels for counseling.”

The Epoch Times notes some netizens have placed the percentage of the population at risk for acting out violently, according to that criteria, as high as 90%. “What should we do after screening out those who are found out?” said one. “Send them all to concentration camps?”

Teng Biao, a former high-profile Chinese human rights lawyer, speaking to Voice of America, said investigations were not fundamentally helpful in resolving incidents, such as the Zhuhai car attack. According to Mr. Biao, Chinese society had become destabilized over decades as a result of “accumulated social contradictions, political corruption, and people’s lack of basic rights.” A situation compounded, he said, by the country’s economic downturn which had exposed social and political contradictions that had been concealed previously by the pace of economic development.

Other experts quoted by The Epoch Times point to China’s excessive state control as exacerbating the contradictions and conflicts that create hostility.

Prof. Ong said she expected the government to “double down on repression”. To that end, a readout from a high-level political meeting following the Zhuhai massacre exhorts the return of the ‘Fengqiao Experience‘ for a new era, a reference to a campaign of grassroots social control during the Mao Zedong era that mobilized the masses to contain class enemies through the use of alarming methods. [For more on this, see: Fengqiao Experience: The CCP Revives a Maoist Terror Strategy].