{"id":38490,"date":"2021-10-30T13:00:48","date_gmt":"2021-10-30T04:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/oct\/30\/vigilante-surveillance-the-rise-of-beijings-neighbourhood-patrols"},"modified":"2021-10-30T13:00:48","modified_gmt":"2021-10-30T04:00:48","slug":"vigilante-surveillance-the-rise-of-beijings-neighbourhood-patrols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=38490","title":{"rendered":"Vigilante surveillance: the rise of Beijing\u2019s neighbourhood patrols"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Red-armbanded \u2018Chaoyang masses\u2019 likened to KGB and MI6 have become a common sight on streets of China\u2019s capital<\/p>\n<p>They are often seen wearing a red armband patrolling residential neighbourhoods of Chaoyang, the biggest district of Beijing, which is home to nearly 3.5 million people. On a sunny late autumn afternoon, they will sit with a group of retirees in the sun and chat away. But when an individual of interest turns up, their attention quickly diverts to them.<\/p>\n<p>In Chinese media and official police statements, these vigilante neighbourhood watchers are called the \u201cChaoyang masses\u201d. Last week, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.globaltimes.cn\/page\/202110\/1237042.shtml\">the state-owned Global Times <\/a>went a step further, quoting internet users as saying the mysterious group \u201ccould match four famous intelligence [agencies], the CIA, MI6, KGB and Mossad\u201d. Some jokingly called it \u201cthe fifth largest intelligence agency in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/oct\/30\/vigilante-surveillance-the-rise-of-beijings-neighbourhood-patrols\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Red-armbanded \u2018Chaoyang masses\u2019 likened to KGB and MI6 have become a common sight on streets of China\u2019s capitalThey are often seen wearing a red armband patrolling residential neighbourhoods of Chaoyang, the biggest district of Beijing, which is home t&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2096,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,79,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-society","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2096"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38491,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38490\/revisions\/38491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}