Update on the Sanlitun Incident

Beijing Newspeak wrote their view on the incident I wrote about in my previous post.  I wrote a comment that I have pasted here for convenience:

While no doubt the actions taken by the authorities were over the top and unacceptable (the alleged racial profiling part), I think people should realize that this is how things work here. Good or bad, that’s it. We can’t change it. We can complain all we want, but that won’t change things. People can avoid putting themselves in these situations. Or even better, those who are wrongfully profiled due to the stereotypes, they could help clean up Sanlitun. “We don’t want drug dealers in our town.” Possible?

Now, I don’t know if I’d agree with the Newspeak’s title claiming the police are “ignorant” - I hope, and am sure they thought about how to respond to this drug problem.  Taking an action like this with no prior planning/thinking is pretty stupid as it will no doubt create a public issue - no doubt they tried to avoid by forcing the bystanders to delete the photos taken.  It seems this could also create a diplomatic problem with the Grenadian Ambassador’s son. Of course, TIC.  Maybe they did just decided to round up all the blacks without much thought.  I find that an interesting course of action, though, as Beijing hosted the Sino-African summit last November (officially titled the Beijing Summit) to improve relations to aid in reducing the energy issue the country is facing.  Certainly taking an action such as this will tick off some in those African governments and may jeopardies further Sino-African deals? We’ll have to see how this progresses.  They do need to do something about the drug problem…  But maybe a “crackdown” isn’t the best course of action?  Now, I’m all for harsh penalties for 100% guilty people… but the authorities need to be a bit smarter and not alienate everyone in the process. It is interesting to note, well, maybe not really interesting, but…. any way, I was in this very area on Friday night, only ~2 hours prior.  Had I decided to stay around instead of going home for an early night (at 11PM), I might have witnessed this myself. Oh well, can’t be everywhere…