The Common Program of the People's Republic of China 1949-1954


Article 10 of the Common Program

The new authorities have two important tasks in 1949, first to consolidate military control in all Regions and second to obtain political control. In the Common Program, four articles are dealing with public security. Article 7 deals with the suppression of counterrevolutionaries. Article 23 describes the importance of a people’s militia to maintain local order. Article 17 abolishes all oppressive laws of the GMD. The fourth is Article 18 which deals with the combat against corruption.
To coordinate all these required actions, the Central Political Juridical Commission is founded, it controls the Public Security Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Justice Ministry. Members of this commission are Dong Biwu, Luo Ruiqing, Kang Sheng, and Peng Zhen. The commission did not control the internal intelligence and security section. The Secretariat of the CCP controls this section and has five departments: Organization, Espionage, Counterespionage, Intelligence, and Training. The task of the police is divided into 2 duties, one secret, the other public. The secret task involves counter-espionage, infiltration, and checking the loyalty of CCP cadres.
The tasks of the PLA will be described in Chapter 3

"In reviewing the police or security work during the year 1950, Lo Jui-ching, Minister of Public Security, reported that during the first 10 months of 1950, 664 special service cases and 9 cases of international espionage had been unearthed, and 13,812 special agents had been arrested in the whole country, and that a large number of these agents had been severely suppressed."
The open task is based upon laws and directives; however, it also involves the prevention of anti-communist movements and the suppression of counterrevolutionaries. The distinction between these 2 tasks is arbitrary. After the Census of 1953, the results of the census are used to control and organize the people. Every household possesses a census record book containing information such as names, gender, occupation, family status, political affiliations, and personal connections. Due to the Communist Party's previous criticisms of the Nationalist government's control mechanisms, they opted not to introduce personal identity cards. Instead, a residence card was allocated to the head of the household. Nevertheless, this didn't exempt individual residents from being monitored by the 'census police' within the household. Consisting of 3 to 11 members of the CCP, public security committees oversee the monitoring of individuals categorized under special census, including former members of the Nationalist Government, GMD affiliates, journalists, lawyers, physicians, and individuals identified as wealthy landowners. These individuals are subject to multiple visits throughout the day.
"A regulation from 1952 mentions the existence of a complete network of police stations and substations in the Northern Chinese Administrative Region.118 Most of the small, Japanese-style ‘police boxes’ at the neighborhood level were expanded into precinct police stations which also performed some of the civil administrative duties of the former demarchs and phylarchs.119" The shortage of trained cadres compels the administration to employ former GMD officers (about 50% to 60%), the rest are former PLA soldiers. A division of 10. 000 military police are dispatched to each province. During the early 1950s, the Chinese Communists addressed the inadequacies of the police system by establishing auxiliary security systems of three distinct types. These included civilian neighborhood groups modeled after Japanese practices in cities where the Japanese occupation had left suitable infrastructure, paramilitary militias following the Jiangxi Soviet style under the control of the PLA in rural areas, and permanent vigilante groups designed to replace various ad hoc campaign organizations in other regions. The militias, together with the military police, were the main enforcers of public security during the several campaigns between 1949-1952.
Kuiken (1992) concludes "Although the Communist police apparat was in name a separate organization, it was in practice subordinated to the PLA. Furthermore, the majority of the armed police forces consisted of former regular PLA troops. The outcome was a very violent garrison-style police regime without a detailed legal fundament. It only subsided after the armistice in Korea in 1953." The CCP bureaucracy maintained significant political influence over the Ministry of Public Security, ensuring that China did not evolve into a police state. Unlike in a typical police state scenario where the political police form a distinct, dominant entity surpassing the regular police, military, and party organization, China lacked a comparable structure. The Party consistently retained political authority over the Ministry of Public Security, with its minister never attaining top-ranking status within the regime's hierarchy.

See for further information on army Chapter 3
1954 Protecting the Home and Protecting the Country

Wei (1955). Page 29 [↩] [Cite]
Wakeman (1992). Page 33. "...Valid household registration is necessary for any urban resident who wishes to obtain a regular job, school admission at any level, housing, or rationed food and clothing.131" Page 33 [↩] [Cite]
Kuiken (1992). Page 33 [↩] [Cite]
Wakeman (1992). Page 27 On May 25-26, 1949 the communist police were brought by train to Shanghai. "Repeating the Eight Regulations, they ordered all personnel to stay at their posts, and to carry out the orders of the People’s Government while their individual cases awaited ‘disposal’ (chuli 处理).108 That term had a slightly ominous ring to it, and many officers were considerably relieved when Zhong Xidong, the Political Commissar of the PLA’s 27th Army, addressed a meeting of police section and bureau chiefs, saying: In the past you served the reactionary regime and did some bad things. This time you were able actually to respond to the PLA’s appeal in the Eight Regulations and not stubbornly resist or destroy things. You also did a good job of preserving local order (difang zhixu 地方秩序) and welcomed liberation. This is your political awakening. You handled this affair well. You did it correctly.109" [↩] [Cite]
Kuiken (1992). Page 35 [↩] [Cite]
Kuiken (1992). Page 39 [↩] [Cite]
Nathan (1997). Page 45 [↩] [Cite]

Chapter 1 of Common Program