The Changing Role of the Police in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1966

In mid-1966, the police in China reportedly assisted mass killings of “class enemies” or showed indifference to such events when they were enacted by others. Why did the police, as a coercive apparatus of the communist regime, not execute these class enemies, as they had done between 1949 and 1957 in the movements to suppress and eliminate counterrevolutionaries? And why did the police, as a state organ for maintaining public order, not take action to prevent or halt these killings? Drawing primarily on original archival documents, this article studies the evolving role of the police and its shifting priorities between 1949 and 1966. It shows that, after an initial expansion followed by a partial contraction, official police responsibilities transitioned from enforcing selective punishment and maintaining public order to assisting or overlooking revolutionary violence.