Shop owners at a farmer’s market in China could only complain angrily to Chinese media as local police quickly and illegally demolished their brick and mortar stores—all in the name of a city renewal project.
In a popular video on Chinese social media, shop owners tangled fruitlessly with urban officers and a demolition crew at Zizhulin Farmer’s Market in Lu'an, a city in the western Chinese province of Anhui, on Dec. 14, 2015. The video was shot by one of the shop owners, and was recently picked up and aired by the Anhui Public Television Network.
“Demolition department, pick up the pace and move these things! If you guys don’t work quickly, you’re fired,” yelled a local urban officer through a loudspeaker in the video.
He continued: “To those from the moving company, I am not going anywhere today if we don’t tear down this place!”
The urban officers, better known as “chengguan,” are the bottom rung law enforcers, and often lawbreakers, in Chinese cities. They have gained notoriety in recent years for their violent, thuggish behavior. Ordinary citizens universally loath chengguan, and frequently share their fresh violence on Chinese social media.
