High Alert
Beijing isn’t taking any chances that the country’s annual gathering of the National People’s Congress will be spoiled this weekend by increasingly quashed calls for demonstrations.
According to the Xinhua news service, via Reuters, the Chinese capital had mobilized 739,000 police, security patrols and citizen neighborhood watchers as the Congress opened on Saturday. That’s just slightly fewer than the number of cops on guard during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, when officials brought out a huge show of force to ward of potential terror threats and anti-government protesters.
The police presence is impossible to miss throughout the city, with soldiers, uniformed officers and grannies in red security armbands on nearly every block. The only question is just how the long the ramped up security will last. The NPC runs for 10 days.
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