Introduction

The Chinese expression 'harmony' (hexie ??) is central in Chinese propaganda and it is central in this book. The Chinese character he (?) means 'kind' or 'gentle' in addition to 'harmonious', even 'peace' or 'tranquillity'. Xie (?) means 'in harmony' or 'to come to an agreement'. The present meaning of hexie, however, is a purely political concept in China today.

Control itself has become indistinguishable from the crimes it was meant to prevent. Delia Lin has written a sociolinguistic analysis of the political uses and misuses of words in China, tracing the word hexie back to Confucian times as focusing on obedience and order instead of kindness and gentleness. The historical meaning of 'harmony' as obedience is enhanced by present political realities: '"Harmony", in the Confucian paradigm, may be best understood as a non-resistant, self-conscious acceptance and observance [of the "rituals" or rules] of li embedded with hierarchical order. In many cases, it refers to an amenable obedience to the hierarchical order devoid of riots and intense conflicts' (Lin, 2017b: 19). Lin describes how the political uses of words sometimes render them virtually useless for common conversation. She argues that this constitutes a form of 'pan-politicization' of words, generating linguistic defiance or fatigue: 'Typically, when the political importance of the pan-politicized keyword is repeatedly reinforced, people begin to tire of the keyword and its derived vocabulary. They start to generate a "psychology of defiance" or nifan xinli (????)' (Lin, 2017b: 109). This defiance again leads to a form of 'pan-politicization fatigue' (fanzhengzhi pilao ?????). Consequently, the keyword suffers a continuing decline of interest from the public as it becomes increasingly meaningless. When this happens, the state must strengthen the political campaign to arouse further interest in the pan-politicization project.

This is clearly what happened with the Party's concept 'harmonious society' (hexie shehui ????). This is one of the reasons I speak of 'harmony' as a myth, because it isn't even meant to describe social well-being, kindness and peace in any meaningful sense. 'Harmony' is simply classic doublespeak - although the traditional philosophy would not regard it as such - and serves as a synonym of control and obedience to the order itself. It is the Party's harmony and order that is at stake here.

'To harmonize' could also be translated as 'to bring (everything and everyone) in line'. In the vocabulary of politics, Gleichschaltung was a politicized expression of the German Nazi regime. All institutions were 'gleichgeschaltet' or 'brought into line'. The German word originally came from the science of electrical engineering and meant that the current only flows in one direction in perfect order. The word died with the Nazi regime and is no longer in use. 'Harmony' has the same meaning in China and is equally politicized as one of the keywords in the current propaganda of 'stability maintenance'. The degree of violence mobilized to uphold that power is a subject that adds massively to overall violence in China rather than being a means to pacify violence. The greatest crime is still seen as bending the Party's rule of political 'harmony'.

There is also another reason why I call 'harmony' a myth. This has to do with numbers - shuzi (??). Crime rates represent highly sensitive information in China. Politics and propaganda rule the game instead of the scientific recording of statistical truths. To Mark Twain's famous line 'lies, damned lies and statistics' should be added 'Chinese crime statistics'. Unfortunately, too many commentators have taken Chinese official crime statistics for granted, not paying heed to the massive problems related to the hidden numbers. I claim that, sadly, the system is rigged from top to bottom, creating false statistics on all levels.

From central propaganda departments to local administrative police performance practices, crime numbers are manipulated in uncountable ways. The analyses made by scholars trying to make sense of the numbers simply cannot be trusted. We can only apply some of the better tools of social science to smoke out some of the unlikely numbers found in China. For instance, it is impossible to have one of the highest global inequality measures plus an extremely high rate of stranger homicides, and yet claim one of the lowest homicide rates in the world. The correlation between inequality and homicide is one of the strongest we have in the science of criminology. Yet Chinese data seem to defy such scientific analysis. It is not because of some Chinese 'exceptionalism'; that China defies scientific scrutiny because of some hidden 'cultural' reason. It is merely because the official data are wrong. Some data are even handled as official 'state secrets', like the execution rates, and need not even be falsified to be concealed from view.

'Harmony' also comes in the form of 'harmonized crime rates'. Do we have the real numbers? None of us does, but my aim is to reveal some of the methods and practices that lead to the false crime rates and to show that violent crime is much more common than the official data claim. This book may be seen as a 'crime novel' that seeks evidence from details that power wants to keep concealed from investigation and insight. We do have methods and research that take apart some of the false numbers. Much information comes from fieldwork and observation, and a lot has been contributed by internal sources and individual research carried out by excellent researchers inside the system itself. Valuable information trickles down to those who care to take notice.

I will highlight some of the issues I address here, starting with the falsified numbers. Not only are the statistics of criminal violence falsified. Even historical events of state violence are erased from the books. I argue that China is a traumatized nation after decades, even centuries, of violence systematically denied or downplayed by the power holders. China has experienced a violence-trauma-violence cycle that can only be broken by a process of truth and reconciliation. Thus, trauma - chuangshang (??) - becomes an important element in our discussion. Political reconciliation, however, seems impossible in the present political climate since such a process requires a judicial system that is both independent and accountable.

When it comes to criminal street violence, we must seek the main causes of such violence in China's transitional character. China's transition into modernity has seen changes even surpassing the mighty Western Industrial Revolution. This development includes both massive economic growth and massive social injustices. China has developed from 'egalitarian poverty' into what Thomas Piketty has called a 'Dickensian capitalism'. Some may call it a neo-liberal trickle-down economy, a model known to create massive inequality. Others have called it 'market Stalinism' focusing on the strict control regime.

Chapter 3 discusses the phenomenon of exclusion - paichi (??). We know from criminology that inequality and exclusion directly cause crime and violent crime given specific social circumstances. Chinese propaganda even plays with Marxist concepts like 'primitive accumulation', justifying Preobrazhensky's dubious concept of a necessary 'socialist primitive accumulation' or 'socialist exploitation'. The social circumstances that created transitional violence in China have also led to the establishment of 'two kinds of people', triggered by the 'household registration' or hukou (??) system. This system has effectively created a division between those with a rural and those with an urban hukou, practically dividing people into urban 'haves' and rural 'have-nots'. It has also formed an army of half a billion internal migrant workers without proper rights. One of China's leading historians, Qin Hui, has compared the situation in today's China to the 'racial socialism' of apartheid South Africa (Qin, 2013a). The fact that South Africa and the People's Republic of China are involved in a tragic contest of being the most unequal society globally cannot be ignored. The intimate link between inequality, violent crime and homicide cannot be bypassed when we analyse the causes of crime in transitional and unequal Chinese society. China does not copy the experiences of Western historical criminology but has followed its own path to modernity and crime.

While the first three chapters discuss the hidden numbers and the causes of violence and crime, the subsequent three chapters discuss different aspects of the control system. Surveillance - jianzhi...