A cliche becoming real: the men in blue

the men in blue

With the relay of the Olympic flames also ending in chaos in San Francisco, after the disasters in London and Paris, time might be not right to debunk existing cliches on China, but I cannot let it pass by. I just talked to a colleague from Hong Kong who started to ask questions like "what does it mean for China", hoping for a concise reaction she could present to her audience. I feel that when analyzing China, you have to define rather clearly who and what you mean. "China" does exist as an entity, but when looking at what is happening in that entity to you to define it a bit more clearly.

Cliches and simplifications are tools journalists love to use and unfortunately, they have now found an image showing China as a police state. In the past it would be the angry uniformed policeman in front of the Forbidden City in Beijing, warning the photographer not to take his picture. What happened then anyway.
But now we have the guys in blue, who can illustrate what is perceived in being China as a police state. That concept is wrong, China is in my eyes not a police state, but cliches and pictures are stronger than what I think about it. So, my colleagues try to find out who the men in blue are. China Digital Times started to summarize the issue, but it is now also googleable.
From the Australian newspaper The Age:

…The Shanghai-based Labour Daily newspaper, quoting Zhao Si, head of the elite unit, said its members were picked in 2007 from the People’s Armed Police, China’s 660,000-strong paramilitary force that mostly deals with internal security. Thousands of PAP forces are still deployed throughout Tibet and Tibetan regions of western China since monk-led protests on March 10 degenerated into a violent riot in Lhasa on March 14.
Pictures of the guards at a swearing-in ceremony, after undergoing special physical, etiquette and language training at the PAP training academy in Beijing, show their official name as “The Protection Team for the Holy Flame of the 29th Olympic Games”.

Probably a famous PR-firm is now trying to figures out what to do and for sure I'm glad I'm not in their shoes. What could the Beijing Olympic Committee have done better and what would I have advised them if they had asked for it?
First, send women, no men. Charming, disarming, smiling women. I'm quite sure women would have been as effective or ineffective in protecting the Olympic Game physically.
Second, introduce those women to the media and the world. Let them blog in English, give them a face, a name and a voice.
But it might be too late for that: an old cliche has found a new symbol.
More at CDT.