China is about to get new leaders for the first time in a decade, and it comes at a crucial moment for the world's most populous nation. Economic growth, which surged for decades, has slowed. Demands for political reform have increased and the Communist Party has been hit by scandal. In a series of stories this week, NPR is examining the multiple challenges facing China. In this story, Louisa Lim looks at China's pervasive efforts to maintain order.
In China, government critics call it "the era of stability maintenance." It's their label for the government's policy over the past decade of prizing internal stability above all else, no matter the cost.
Beijing this year is spending $111 billion on its domestic security budget, which covers the police, state security, militia, courts and jails. This is now higher than its publicly disclosed military expenditure.
Three scenes illustrate how the state security apparatus targets individuals, as well as groups of people, and how the system feeds off itself.
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Cui Weiping, a soft-spoken, retired film professor, has been monitored by state security agents for the past nine years. The surveillance began after she wrote a letter sympathizing with mothers whose children were killed in the 1989 student protests.