Chinese pranksters and rebels take on rule-flouting officials

So you think you have problems with bureaucrats. Want to know why the authorities in China are so damned heavy-handed? The draconian clamp-down goes hand-in-hand with a contempt for the law from the powerful and privileged. However, it looks to me like the rule-flouters are losing the battle with the jobsworths.

Yep, the peasants are revolting — but the officials are positively repulsive.

You’d think that with all the crap that happened down the ages, China would be a cowed society. But while people do indeed toe the line, there’s also this curious phenomenon where, once they’ve had enough of being pushed around, they let you know it.

Just saw this at The Wall Street Journal

After being pulled over in the Henan Province capital of Zhengzhou for breaking traffic rules and driving with a fake license plate, an official from a nearby county warns a policeman not to “poke your nose in other people’s business” and threatens to have him killed.

Escorted by a police cruiser, a car carrying the mayor of the Hebei Province city of Xingtai hits a 14-year-old student while rushing through a red light. The mayor carries on with his official duties that day instead of going to the hospital to visit the victim, who was left permanently disabled.

Traffic police in Hunan’s Hengdong County brawl with a man they accuse of having illegally installed an umbrella on his motorcycle. A crowd of more than 1,000 onlookers gets so angry over the policemen’s treatment of the motorcyclist, they overturn two police cars in protest. A subsequent government investigation finds the policemen were “simplistic, rough and lacked patience” in enforcing the law.

Policewoman Mao Li in Shanxi’s Hunyuan County is showered with praise online after it’s reported that she regularly tickets county officials whose cars violate traffic rules. In the six months since starting her job, Mao is reported to have handed out 138 tickets to officials in nearly all the county government agencies, including the police department. She also ticketed her aunt, despite her father’s intervention on the aunt’s behalf.

I’m also told that, not only did father of the Great Firewall, Fang Binxing, get hit by a shoe-thrower, there were also eggs in the mix. And demonstrating a healthy prankster pricking of authority, the room he was given to speak for his recent Hubei University lecture, was Room 404 — the number of the online message that tells you a page is unavailable.

Keep it up, chaps.