Well, no one ever said police were good at PR.

As the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph reported yesterday, a user on a popular Chinese online discussion board has published portions of a police training manual — parts of which read like something out of a Bush-era CIA torture memo — setting off a minor firestorm of online outrage.

The book (pictured) is titled "Practices of City Administration Enforcement." Anger has so far focused mostly on one line, which advises officers to "leave no blood on the face, no wounds on the body and no people in the vicinity" when "dealing" with offenders.

The line comes from a section of the book called "Methods for the Prevention and Control of Violence," translated here for the benefit of GlobalPost readers:
 

1 — Use the highest degree of close-quarters dodging movements to avoid any violent attack — move quickly and react sharply. Before the subject has a chance to strike again, control the subject's limbs, quickly make it so he cannot move and do whatever you can to press him down on the ground while telling the subject in a loud voice than any resistance will result in him going to jail.

2 — It's best if multiple officers work together to control the subject bodily in a single move, acting effectively and forcefully so as not to give the subject any pause for breath. Then remove him from the scene, making sure the subject has lost all power to counter-attack, and confiscate any of the subject's property left at the scene.

4 — Do not attempt to control the subject's violent actions in front of a crowd. If a crowd cannot be avoided, use relatively soft tactics.

5 — When dealing with the violent subject, take care to leave no blood on the face, no wounds on the body and no people in the vicinity. Finish the work in a rapid sequence of actions and leave no trace. As soon as you engage, preventative action must be neat and tidy. Do not hesitate, use all necessary force.

6 — The entire process needs to be carried out calmly and without becoming distracted or flustered. Do not worry about whether you are a match for the subject, whether you might injure him, how long this kind of encounter will take to end, etc. In this instance, you should become ego-less, a resolute law enforcment officer defending the dignity of city administrative regulations.

Several state-run media organizations, including the central propaganda organ People's Daily, have questioned whether the book was actually used in training police officers, even whether it actually exists. But the relatively independant Southern Weekend newspaper has found a link to the book on the website of the state-run Xinhua Book Store, while sister paper Southern Metropolis Daily says a Beijing law enforcement official has confirmed it was used in training.

As the Telegraph notes, the book is aimed at chengguan, or "city administrative officers," a particularly unpopular branch of Chinese law enforcement, often derided as thugs with badges, responsible for rounding up illegal street vendors and other "undesirables."

A completely unscientific survey of online response to the book finds a vast majority of Chinese netizens angry over the book, with a small minority — say around 30 percent — sticking up for the police as a "disadvantaged group."

Interested Chinese speakers can see the original post here.

One nagging question surrounding the furor is, why now? The book was published in 2006, and (despite the Telegraph's talk of "leaks") is apparently publically available. It even appears to have come up for discussion on a different online forum two years ago.  Is the financial crisis making people cranky? Or maybe someone has a grudge against the chengguan and is trying to sabotage them, in which case it could be any one of a several tens of millions of people.
 

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