Chinese public transport has, apparently, the same level of security as airport security here in Europe. You want to travel on a fast train, your stuff gets scanned and you get checked too. You want to travel on the metro, your stuff gets scanned and you get checked too.
The number of people involved in these checks can get to be more than a little silly. We travelled by metro in Beijing, and the nearest station to us was on one line, with, so far as I could see, very little traffic. Yet there were three or four, often seven or eight, people at each entrance, in black security uniforms, with machinery, checking travellers for naughty stuff.
These were almost always youngsters; I don’t remember seeing an older person on duty. It was blatent theatre; often the young lady waving the wand around checking me personally did a most cursory check (there were young men doing these checks too, but for some strange reason I always preferred to be manhandled by the pretty young women).
So I found myself wondering if this is a Chinese way of dealing with what, in the UK, would be youth unemployment. Is it better to put people in makework jobs rather than have them getting depressed on the dole?
On the other hand, I remember, a very long time ago, visiting the Soviet Union, and using the rather beautiful Moscow metro. There, at the top and bottom of every escalator, was a little old lady, whom I presume was there to, if necessary, press the emergency stop button. That struck me then as strange makework too. Perhaps these are both examples of communist economies; no one’s unemployed, lots of people do makework.
Of course, there could be a serious security problem in Beijing and other Chinese big cities that require high levels of security. I didn’t get the impression of any real tension, so I don’t think it was that (but what would I know). No, I think it was mostly makework, with the consequence that the state has created for itself a spare conscript quality security force, just in case it needed what a conscript quality security force could provide.