Propaganda and the Police: The Softer Side of State Control in China

Confronting a rising tide of police-society conflict, China’s Ministry of Public Security is stepping up propaganda efforts aimed at smoothing the institution’s rough edges. Though it may seem strange for police in an authoritarian regime to worry about public opinion, China’s PSB has long engaged in such efforts. From Ministry-sponsored, over-the-top T.V. entertainment specials to local station social media accounts that blast out friendly reminders to drive carefully, the organization is engaged in public outreach at virtually every level. Most recently, police reform documents from 2014 and 2015 feature statements about the need for police to address social concerns and focus on meeting expectations of the public. To implement these directives, provincial level public security bureaus are investing in high quality television programming that features footage of real police stations and field sites. These special productions attempt to paint the local police in a more relatable way by focusing on the problems police solve and the people they help, yet there are no publicly available studies analyzing the effectiveness of these efforts. To analyze the new public relations campaigns, this paper details the extent of police-society conflict using evidence collected from focus groups and the author’s original dataset of documented conflicts with the police and other public security agents across the country. It first parses variation in public relations campaigns on the provincial level in three provinces to explore the ways in which public security departments are combatting their image problem. It then examines the findings from focus groups with local residents to determine the potential response of the public to these campaigns. Finally, it analyzes the rates of police-society conflict in the same three provinces before and after the release of the public relations campaign specials. Taken together, the findings provide preliminary insight into the effectiveness of these campaigns for reducing police-society conflict and influencing public opinion on the police.