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

usual insignia of either the police or the riot police.” 74
Such evidence suggests the possibility of PLA participation
in operations to restore order in Lhasa, but the
vehicles and troops could also have belonged to PAP
or militia units.
What lessons, if any, did the PAP and the PLA
derive from the experience of suppressing the riots
in Lhasa? Openly published literature is exceedingly
reticent on this point. Given the paucity and the rather
vague nature of the sources available, we can only
speculate. In June 2009, the TAR authorities opened
a new “Tibet Emergency Response Communications
Bureau” in Lhasa, equipped with new emergency response
vehicles, portable Inmarsat satellite equipment
and other advanced communications equipment. 75 In
June 2008, two authors from the Tibet military command
writing in Guofang suggested that reserve forces
in border areas such as Tibet needed further emphasis
on political indoctrination and training in tasks like
containing riots and sealing off urban areas in order to
guarantee that they would be politically reliable and
professionally qualified to work effectively at counterterrorism
tasks. 76 From these hints, one might speculate
that the need for a more timely application of
coercive force, better response and communications,
better training and political reliability of local reserve
and militia forces may have been among the lessons
the PLA/PAP learned from the Lhasa riot of March
2008.
One area in which we see more direct evidence of
the lessons of the Lhasa riots is in the new People’s
Police law which the Standing Committee of the National
People’s Congress approved in August 2009.
This law defines the scope and nature of the PAP’s
responsibilities, including its responsibility for han-
260