Nosy neighborhood teams help keep Chinese in line

BEIJING Families go to them if they have trouble with a teenageror mother-in-law. Couples contact them for advice on birth control.Residents call them to have potholes filled outside their homes.

But China's neighborhood committees also are nosy, paternalisticbodies that have become a vital cog in the labyrinthian governmentapparatus that both bosses the Chinese from cradle to grave and caresfor them like children.

Committee members, most of them retired women, intervene inpersonal life to an extent that is astonishing to Westerners butroutine to Chinese who have lived with them since 1952, three yearsafter the communists rose to power.

Each committee is in charge of about 800 households. They areofficially considered autonomous organizations that work incooperation with the government and are elected by the people. Butordinary Chinese claim their members actually are selected bysubdistricts of city governments and the committees are essentiallyan arm of the state.

Members of the neighborhood committee on Bei Binmasi Lane inBeijing are paid 45 yuan ($12) a month to work about six hours a day,six days a week. They say they are knowledgeable about theirneighbors because many of them have lived in the area all theirlives.

Their duties range from public order and sanitation tocounseling and encouraging family planning.

Committee members patrol the streets, keep an eye open forcriminal activity and act as a deterrent against crime, said YanShouming, head of the neighborhood committee section of the city subdistrictof which the Bei Binmasi neighborhood committee is a part.

If a family has a misbehaving teenager, it can ask theneighborhood committee to help "educate" him, officials said.

If a couple or in-laws have an unresolved quarrel, a fairlycommon occurrence in China's crowded cities where many couples livewith the husband's parents, neighborhood committees can be asked tomediate.

The committees also get involved in marital disputes and thepressure is often so strong that the couple reconciles theirdifferences, even when they are serious and long-term.

Asked if the committee informs on those involved in unorthodoxpolitical thinking or actions, Yan dismissed the notion, saying thecommittee's purpose is to provide services. Traditionally, however,neighborhood committees have worked closely with the Public SecurityBureau, a police unit.

Neighborhood committees also play a role in the campaign aimedat getting people to support China's population control policy oflimiting most couples to one child, said committee member ZhaoFuying.

"When the policy started, some people wanted to have a secondchild, but now they don't," said Gao Yukun, spokesman for thesubdistrict. Since the policy went into force in the early 1980s,such severe financial and political sanctions have been imposedagainst city dwellers who want a second child that many young couplessay it is useless even to try.

The policy is less entrenched in the countryside and there havebeen reports of involvement by the rural counterparts of neighborhoodcommittees, the village committees, in attempts to make unwillingwomen have abortions.

Before some holidays, the committees conduct surprise sanitationinspections of homes, putting "Sanitary Household" stickers on thedoors of homes that pass inspection and lecturing those with untidydwellings on the bad effect of sloppiness on their health, said Gao.

Among other committee duties are safety inspections, shoppingand other chores for the elderly, and informing the city of people'scomplaints such as problems with streets, said subdistrict head Yan.