
Police Barged into My Room While I Was Covering Fujian Chemical Spill - danso
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2018-11-20/police-barged-into-my-room-while-i-was-covering-fujian-chemical-spill-101349591.html
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baybal2
Pro-tip: look for small, cash only hotels. Those "uncly Liu inn" style
lodgings are easy to find in rural areas.

If they are cash only, and not issuing fapiaos, it means that they have no
formal registration.

For travel, mopeds are not required to have number plates, and are not
triggering number plate scanners.

Cash only intercity buses also likely running informally. Tickets for regular
rail are also available for cash, but lately there are reports of police doing
ID checks on trains.

Telling this as helpful tips to avoid excess attention from police as a
foreigner in China. Living in a big city with sizeable foreigner population is
relatively easy. The only "minor" inconvenience you encounter are occasional
4am police visits to check your ID, and a broken door if you happened to be
out during them. While in smaller towns, you can easily be one of, say, 20
foreigners in town, and the police attention to you will be much more
"personalised." Also, get a Chinese name. It is said that foreigners with
Chinese names get way less attention than people with non-Chinese names.

~~~
mstaoru
This comment is unfortunately so wrong on many levels. I live for 12 years in
China and work in systems security.

For the hotels, "easy to find" for you -> easy to find for the police. China
is actively resisting people moving around without tracing them, so please
rest assured those "spy" hotels are the first ones to file everything about
you to the local police unit. I know of several anecdotal cases.

For years and years, all mopeds and scooters require plates. You can buy fake
plates on Taobao, but it's a great way to get into a very big trouble,
especially if you're a foreigner.

Every train and every long-distance bus are ticketed with original ID only.
Maybe in some small rural train station, you can buy with a photoshopped
passport copy, but certainly not in Tier-3+ cities.

In 12 years I've never ever heard of "4am" police checks. They come sometimes,
they're very polite. You don't even have to open the door for them, and they
will never break the door unless there is a fire or a distress call. Chinese
police are lazy and wrong on many levels, but they're very very far from the
Western media portrayal.

Chinese name tip is a joke. You will be registered everywhere with your
passport name, and nobody ever asks for a Chinese name.

~~~
baybal2
Quite surprised to heard that. That's interesting.

I travelled few times from Shenzhen to Heihe and back without having to
produce my ID even once. Just a year ago, I went Beijing to Heihe by bus, and
again I only needed cash. And you can for sure travel around Guangdong on
regular rail (non CRH,) and buy plain paper tickets without any barcodes for
cash at few remaining standalone ticket departments. And access to the train
platform on regular rail is way laxer than on CRH.

I don't have a specific need to travel without paper trail, nevertheless,
sometimes, I have a need to travel with 4+ huge bags full on electronics,
maotai, clothes, and other mass consumption items whenever relatives on the
other side of the border request provisions from the land plenty. And that
attracts a lot of unapproving looks and solicitation of humanitarian aid by
impoverished officials, security personnel, and town Bubbas.

As for moped number plates, I know that individual cities require them, and
issue them themselves. There are no nationwide moped number plate system as I
know. On what is Chinese interstate network, and even on toll roads, I do
frequently see people riding without number plates. And if you travel on
smaller roads, and not on a highway, there is close to no control, and no
random ID checks.

As for 4am checks, quite a number of people in Shenzhen did get them. The
famous South African youtuber SerpentZA living in Shenzhen had a number. So
did few of my coworkers. And it all times, the guys coming are not your chill
policemen posted at streets, but Teqin, other Chinese three letter agencies
who are totally not against manhandling you face to the floor.

As for Chinese name, you know that you have a full legal right to use your
legal Chinese name if you have such?

~~~
mstaoru
Seriously doubt that. The relevant law for bus travel is in effect since March
1st, 2017. Source:
[http://www.gd.gov.cn/gzhd/zcjd/snzcsd/201703/t20170301_24804...](http://www.gd.gov.cn/gzhd/zcjd/snzcsd/201703/t20170301_248047.htm)
For train travel is in effect since Jan 1st, 2012. Source:
[http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2012-01/01/content_2035488.htm](http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2012-01/01/content_2035488.htm)
I also travel around China for work, sometimes by non-CRH train, sometimes by
bus, and was always asked for original ID.

~~~
baybal2
I never meant that it is easy to ride paper trail free in China, or if you can
get ID free tickets on a golden platter.

With busses it is still hit and miss. Bigger bus companies, which allow you to
reserve tickets online tend to require it, and smaller "Uncle Liu Bus" type
companies more than likely not.

As for train tickers, you will always be asked for an ID and given a regular
blue ticket if you buy them right at the railway station these days. To get an
old type pink ticket, you have to look for standalone ticket offices ran by
agents. There are very, very few remaining, but they do sell legit tickets.
One or two in Foshan, one in Shunde, one in Meizhou. And there is always a
risky option to buy them from grannies.

[https://imgur.com/a/xlB2sX4](https://imgur.com/a/xlB2sX4)

And one even lesser known way is to find stations with very, very old ticket
vending machines that are from 2008 or so. Those don't require IDs, and take
cash. Only single digits of them are remaining in Guangdong, and whom ever
knows of them don't blabber around about that.

------
Stratoscope
_Chinese police apologise after Caixin reporter’s ‘prostitution bust’ hotel
room inspection_

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2174190/chin...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2174190/chinese-
police-apologise-after-caixin-reporters-prostitution-bust)

------
cascom
this is sad, but I find that fact that the harassment level was so mild the
more surprising aspect

~~~
creep
I don't. This person is a journalist. If you want to stop a journalist from
writing a story, you kill them or you intimidate them.

China's already under intense public scrutiny. Killing a journalist,
especially one who has already published the story in question, would be
incredibly unwise!

One could rough her up but in most of these encounters she was in public. Many
times they tried to get her alone. But she refused and had already published
the story when they entered her hotel room. A beating would have been equally
as unwise as killing her. Anything more intimidating than barging into her
hotel room would have been a huge disaster for the Chinese government.

------
knodi123
It sounds like the police suspected something beyond what she was actually
doing. I mean, I'm aware of "the TV drama cliche of police nabbing suspects in
hotel rooms" \- but in this they just searched the rooms of her hotel room -
_including the window ledge_ \- but they didn't confiscate her photos or
search her belongings?

It seems more like they were looking for a specific person, instead of trying
to intimidate directly. I'm aware of how intimidating this must have been, but
they didn't say things like "show us the photos you took", or "don't discuss
what you saw or else", or anything like that. She was _already_ going to be
leaving the town...

Or did they maybe want to catch her in the act of having sex with someone so
they could blackmail her?

There's a strong implication that she suspected something else nefarious was
being planned, which is why she kept turning down "too obvious" offers of
exactly what she was in town for- but based on the behavior of the police who
presumably did whatever they intended to do, it's not clear to me exactly
_what_ nefarious plan she wound up avoiding.

All in all, this is more confusing to me than anything else.

~~~
justin66
Why do you feel the need to manufacture theories that are unsupported by facts
when the reality, intimidation by police, is bad enough?

~~~
knodi123
I'm trying to manufacture a theory that better fits all the facts.
Intimidation is a simple theory, and acceptable as a fallback, but if that's
all that was going on, then it raises some questions.

~~~
eiaoa
> I'm trying to manufacture a theory that better fits all the facts.
> Intimidation is a simple theory, and acceptable as a fallback, but if that's
> all that was going on, then it raises some questions.

You definitely seem like you're trying to manufacture a theory, but nothing
you've written "better fits all the facts."

At best, I think you're operating under a set of faulty assumptions that's
causing you to mistakenly reject most likely explanation.

------
module0000
This sounds unpleasant...but I don't know why she rejected their offers so
many times. If you don't seem suspicious at first, why shun all attempts at
"official" contact? I'm not saying that it's her fault or anything of that
nature, just that it might have went a bit smoother if she had been more
forthcoming(whether or not she was compelled to). That must have been
frightening though to suddenly have the fuzz at the foot of your bed though -
very uncool of law enforcement to behave that way. Perhaps that's not as out
of the norm as it seems to me(someone from the West).

~~~
sirmike_
Uhhh! She had every right. Free will. No other reasons need to be given. I’m
not debating with you I’m just shocked that you would posit such a silly
statement “but I don't know why she rejected their offers so many times.”

~~~
yorwba
Of course she had the right and doesn't have to explain herself, but it would
certainly have been informative if she'd done so.

Maybe she thought that listening to the official story would be a waste of
time and that they would only try to pressure her. But knowing where the
official story differs from what she personally observed, and what kind of
changes in her reporting they'd have demanded, would have been interesting in
itself.

