chapter nine China's New Police and Prison Systems

Police and prison.systems, usually functionally distinct, were asso­ ciated so frequently in Xinzheng reforms as to favor their com­ bined treatment in the present chapter.

CHINA'S NEW POLICE SYSTEM

Chinese awareness of modern police systems began with exposure to the xunbu or patrolman of China's foreign concessions. 1 In 1897- I8g8, province initiated measures to transform its cor­ rupted baqjia security and surveillance system into a police system manned by xunbu, as part of its famed reform movement. Guiding Hunan was a plan drawn up by Huang Zunxian, veteran diplo­ mat to and the United States. Huang's plan combined ele­ ments from outside of China and Shanghai with innovations of his own.2 Historian Wang Chia-chien (Wang Jiajian) states plainly that it was Huang Zunxian who "first introduced a modern West­ ern police system into China. "3 Daniel Bays provides a connecting link: "This is one of the institutions which [] tried to save out of the wreckage of the Hunan reforms ofi8g8, and one which he himself implemented in Wuchang after 1900. "4 Within this same time frame, Shanghai daotai Caijunjian (dates unknown) brought Nagatani Takanori (dates unknown), a police precinct chief from Tokyo, to Shanghai in 1898 to help transform the city's baoJia system into a modern police system. But at the time of the Hundred Days Reform, Cai left office and the effort died. 5 It was also in 1898 that Kang You wei called for xunbu in his general reform proposals. 6 Neither enlightened advocacy nor scattered experiments seem to have had much impact upon imperial thinking about police Chinas New Police and Prison Systems before xgoo. It was the Boxer fiasco, and particularly the demon­ stration effect of foreign police auxiliaries restoring order quickly and efficiently in occupied Beijing, that changed the minds of per­ sons in high places. In Beijing, high court officials like Prince Qing and Prince Su (Su qinwang or Shanqi, x866-1922) had been so impressed by police protection of imperial properties during the foreign occupation of that city that they now undertook steps to adopt a modern police system for themselves. 7 Throughout China, others responded to the Reform Edict of January 1901 by submitting memorials favoring a modern police system. Among the first to urge this step was Zhangjian, a rapidly rising star of reform. Holder ofthe covetedJinshi degree, Zhangjian had been prompted by China's defeat in 1895 to forego government ser­ vice in order to devote himself fully to strengthening China through private enterprise, from his hometown base of Nantong on the Yangzi River, just northwest of Shanghai. 8 In a prodigious effort between February 4th and 2oth, Zhang composed his Bianfa pingyi (Ordinary Proposals on Reform), lengthy, erudite, and widely read. He submitted a copy at once to Kunyi, who forwarded it to the throne. 9 Bianja pingyi addressed police matters as it did almost every major area of institutional reform. Employing the Japanese term keisatsu ( > Ch.Jingcha), it proposed that every Chinese prefec­ ture, department, district, and city should have police officers and police academies (jingcha xuetang). For textbooks, it recommended the various japanese police regulations (RibenJingcha zhangcheng). 10

POLICE FUNCTIONS Liu Kunyi and Zhang Zhidong, aided by Zhang Jian, similarly advocated a modern police system in the second of their three July memorials. After reviewing the most blatant defects of the Chi­ nese public security system, they commented as follows: "In Japan, the term for police is Jingcha. Their head is a Jingcha zhang, and they are organized aroundjingcha Bu (Police Bureaus). The primary aim of their police regulations is to preserve the peace and prevent trouble, not unlike our Baojiaju and army (yingbing) inspection stations. However, Jingcha are the products of xuetang, their regulations are strict, and their duties broad. It is the Police