The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

and submachine guns) with which they are equipped
for fear that the bullets will pass through the suspect
and still have sufficient velocity to kill or injure innocent
bystanders. China, he suggests, needs to develop
lower-velocity weapons and use dum-dum bullets in
order to make it safer for police to fire on suspects under
chaotic and crowded conditions. 67
While not forthcoming about operational details,
openly published descriptions and analyses of the
handling of mass incidents are often willing to draw
general lessons on the appropriate use of police (including
PAP) power. Most of these lessons are directed
more at the government than the police or PAP
themselves. The major theme emerging from the treatment
of these incidents is that local authorities should
be judicious in their use of police power and do their
utmost to prevent delicate situations from developing
into mass incidents which the police and the PAP then
have to bring under control. Commentators including
academics and local, provincial, and national level
government and Party officials suggest that when
dealing with sensitive events that may lead to a mass
incident or when in the initial stages of handling a
mass incident, local officials should explore ways of
defusing the tension. They should use the media to
communicate the government’s position clearly to
the people, avoid class-struggle style rhetoric which
brands petitioners or demonstrators as “masses who
are ignorant of the truth, instigated by a small number
of bad people” and refrain from politicizing events by
suggesting that they are caused by “evil forces in society”
or even by foreign agitators. 68
Another area in which the PAP has derived lessons
from the handling of mass incidents is that of the
policy and legal framework for the military’s carry-
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