August 13, 2010
Meters east to the short bridge that connects southeastern Chongqing's Hong'an township with Biancheng, the popular "frontier town" of western Hunan, stands a provincial welcome gate. The walls beneath it, like much elsewhere, are sprayed with graffiti only here, the phone numbers are for obtaining guns, the civilian possession of which is strictly outlawed in China.
A random call to one of the numbers was picked up by a mid-aged man who, in a heavy Hunan accent, assured that for 2,200 yuan ($ 325), a Type 64, the semi-automatic pistol still in service with various police forces, could be delivered to the caller's door. < br />
"It comes with a silencer and five free bullets. Every five more cost 100 yuan," the voice said. He asked for a 500 yuan deposit to a bank account, and said a black Santana car with a Qinghai license plate would pick the buyer up afterwards and travel into the steep mountains, where the gun could be tested.
"Don't bother checking. The car was stolen, and the ID I used to set up the bank account is fake too, "the man warned. Police on both sides of the border called it a hoax and said no action could be taken unless the man was caught doing business. 内容来自dedecms
Out here in this remote, mountainous, autonomous part of southwestern China, where powder shotguns were a tradition of local ethnic Miao inhabitants until the country in 1996 introduced legislation that prohibits buying, selling and transporting of firearms without official permission, guns still have a market.
The Small Arms Survey, an independent institute in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2007 estimated the total number of guns held by civilians in China at 40 million, the third only after the US and India. That number, however, has not been confirmed by Chinese officials.
Today, the some 2,000 self-proclaimed Biasha people of Bingmei, a town in Guizhou province, are the only civilians in China who can legally possess guns (powder shotguns with no bullets, that is). Since 1999, the tribe has made tourism its pillar industry, with a team of around 80 local gunmen performing for on average two groups of visitors per day.
"The shotguns are just used as props, nothing more, "Gun Yunliang, the team's captain, told China Daily. Gun, 40, said the team members earn around 300 yuan a month from the shows. copyright dedecms
But 500 km north of Bingmei, where shotguns were confiscated in massive numbers and "gun tourism" is not an option, gun trade instead flourished. In the 1990s, Songtao, a highly impoverished county in Guizhou, emerged as one of China's three most famous homes to the makers of guns (the other two, also poor, western counties with a significant body of the non-Mandarin speaking population, are in Hualong of Qinghai province and Hepu of Guangxi province, respectively).
Songtao is less than two hours' drive from both Hong'an's superior Xiushan and Biancheng's superior Huayuan. Historically beyond effective government control, the autonomous counties span across highly complex terrains in three provincial-level regions and are each roughly 500 km from any major city.
Until 2006, the trio formed a triangle for underground gun trading, where illegals firearms made in Songtao were trafficked into Xiushan and Huayuan and eventually, throughout the country's booming coasts. 织梦内容管理系统
And within the region, particularly in Huayuan, guns were popular for gangsters controlled by private owners of omnipresent mines, according to Long Wenyu, captain of the Songtao publice security bureau's Gun Task Force (GTF).
Songtao set up China's first county-level GTF in October 2004, at a time when the top leaders in Guizhou vowed to curb gun makers and traffickers in the area by 2006 and ensure no further backlash in 20 years.
The county had done just that up to now, Zhou Shenghua, deputy Party chief of Songtao's politics and law committee, which oversees local law enforcement, told China Daily.
"The situation has been for the most part contained since 2006. Our current focus is on the promotion of relevant policies to villagers and prevention of any possible backlash, "he said.
To aid that effort, officials were assigned last year to head gun seizure operations in nine of Songtao's 11 towns where the business had been thriving. All hostels, lathe workshops, hardware stores, electric welding businesses as well as metal recovery units in these towns have been incorporated into a surveillance network, according to a statement provided by local police. < br /> copyright dedecms
The officials, who appear as deputy town leaders, and a team of 48 law enforcement officers and former servicemen are also responsible for helping alleviate rural poverty, which the government sees as a direct cause of the local gun industry's once-massive popularity.
Assembling a handmade Type 64, for example, takes an experienced hand only two to three days and cost around 300 yuan. Several transactions by local middlemen could push the sales price to more than 10,000 yuan in places such as Shenzhen, an economic powerhouse in Guangdong province.
"In two to three days, these people make more money than we do in a month (around 3,000 yuan)," a local GTF member joked.
For local farmers, whose annual earnings from toiling the field are typically in the higher hundreds, the gun money can be a big boost. "The profit is simply too tempting ... there's always going to be people willing to take the risk, "Zhou observed.
When Wu Bike could no longer afford a high school education in the wake of his father's death in 1998, making guns seemed to be a reasonable option . dedecms.com
The oldest of three sons and then the family's sole breadwinner, Wu learned to assemble Type 64 pistols after taking apart imitation guns (which, too, are outlawed in China).
"I never gave it much thought. All my friends did it," he recalled. Soon after, Wu and three of his friends, all farmers in Songtao's Daxing township, were caught by police in his cellar, where they just sold a handmade Type 64 to a local middleman for about 500 yuan.
Wu was sentenced to four years in prison. But it did not take him long to pick up the pieces again. "The second gun was half- finished when I was caught the first time. I wanted to get it done, "he said. In summer 2002, just months after his jail term was up, local police raided Wu's house and confiscated around two dozen gun parts.
As the number of gun parts found was lower than 30 the legal requirement for a jail term (a Type 64 pistol has 32 to 33 spare parts) Wu was sentenced to three years' reeducation through labor. copyright dedecms
< br /> Wu went home in 2006, when local authorities planned to shift its gun control policies toward poverty alleviation in the face of substantially reduced gun crimes. Two years later, the government offered him 100 free pigs (and on top of that, 50 yuan of subsidies for every sow) to start pig breeding.
That helped him settle down and get married in the same year. Today, Wu's hopes are on his one-year-old boy, who he wants to "stay in school longer".
Since 2006, the Songtao government has spent roughly five million yuan on roads, tap water and power grid upgrades in the 11 towns where gun crime was rampant (authorities claim that number has now been reduced to six as a result of these efforts). A total of 913 people in these towns regularly receive financial aid.
But still, the money is falling short. Wu has no tap water at home and is struggling to break even with pig breeding. His gun-making days may be over, but only to the extent that he "dare not" do it anymore. 内容来自dedecms
Gun seizure itself has a side effect, too. Since rural shotguns were confiscated, wild boars have soared in great numbers locally, causing harm for both farmers and their land, the Songtao GTF said.
Zhou, deputy Party chief of Songtao's politics and law committee, acknowledged that the main challenges for local gun seizures today are still intrinsically economic. "I can't rule out the possibility that local people (with know-how in guns) are migrating elsewhere (to make and sell guns)," he said. "Technical leakage is beyond our control," Zhou said. Gun-making technology, which some locals inherited from earlier generations while others learned through work experience in arsenals, is something those who understand it want to hold onto, said Long, captain of the Songtao GTF. "The graffiti ads are almost never for real; the actual makers and dealers don't put things out in the open. There has to be enormous trust between the parties involved in the (gun) business. That's why it's always done in local circles, through friends and relatives, "he explained, adding that local gunmakers have long turned underground some farm during the day and retreat into remote hillside caves with hand generators at night after consistent efforts by the task force. 织梦好，好织梦
Ultimately, local gun makers still treasure kinship and blood ties the most. And with the GTF keeping a close eye on their sons and nephews, some veterans in the business have managed to pass the gun knowledge onto outsiders through their daughters "as a wedding gift", according to Long.
Long, 36, is the longest-serving member of the Songtao GTF's squad of eight. The officers (and an additional female police on office duty) are all from local ethnic groups, with four of them fluent in the Miao language. They are on average 34 years old and each have a decade of experience in the police force.
The officers' proximity to the local culture is highly valuable for the GTF, Long said, while stressing that his men are all highly disciplined self-starters who are ready to face danger at every turn.
GTF member Yan Bo, 28, said he and other fellow officers are not really fans of shoot'em-ups because "their plots are rarely as exciting as what we do every day". The young father of the Tujia ethnic group proudly announced (albeit with tight lips) that the team is proficient "in all kinds of tactics" in dealing with local gun suspects. 内容来自dedecms
"It's like playing hide-and-seek. Both sides are keeping an eye on the other party," added Long. < br />
The ethnic Miao captain said his squad's efforts have helped contain local gun trade to the point that most Songtao residents dare not make guns anymore. "And I promise you that we're able to catch about two-thirds of all the people who come here wanting to buy guns too, "Long told China Daily.
But there is still room for gun makers, dealers and prospective buyers. Despite having a mechanism for interconnected police surveillance throughout the triangle, Zhou, deputy Party chief of Songtao's politics and law committee, said the fact thatsimilar endeavors in Chongqing and Hunan are not as consistent as those in Guizhou had caused a mental backlash in local circles.
In Xiushan, a senior publicity officer with the police bureau said gun seizure operations "were the focus of last year's campaigns" and declined interview requests when contacted by China Daily. 本文来自织梦
Chongqing in January 2009 launched a televised, police -chase style crackdown on underground weapons. The campaign involved more than 1,000 police officers and paramilitary forces armed with bazookas, and allegedly destroyed four underground arsenals and 10 weapon stores. Local police detained dozens of gun suspects, who they all claim to be from Songtao .
And in Biancheng of Hunan, 7.62 mm caliber seamless steel barrels, an essential part of a wide range of revolvers, pistols and rifles, are up for grabs. "We can refine everything here, so long as you bring the steel, "said a woman surnamed Yangafter being shown the specifications. Yang runs a small familyhardware store in rural Biancheng.
A Beijing-based source with Norinco Group, a State-owned arms dealer , called the specifications "very sensitive" without explicitly confirming if the barrels can be used to assemble guns.
He Li, deputy chief of the Ministry of Public Security's firearms division, earlier said the barrels of handmade firearms were mostly purchased, not made at home. While 7.62 mm steel barrels have no civilian usage, their manufacturing and sales are not bound by law, he said. 织梦内容管理系统
The State should work on regulations to limit the manufacturing of 7.62 mm barrels, He said.
Yu Chenkang, Hu Yuguang and Pei Xiaoning contributed to the story
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