Last week's attack by chainsaw gangsters on a nature reserve in Beijing's Huairou District - part of an attempt to extort money from hoteliers and restaurateurs - underscores how Beijing in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games has already entered an epoch of social breakdown. Some call it 'terrorism with Chinese characteristics'. Local law enforcement officials appear hapless to do anything.
Gang extortion is now almost routine practice in China, even in the nation's capital. Despite all of the space cadet panda cartoons praising the 2008 Olympics, families gather outside of schools in crowds to pick up children fearing they may be kidnapped otherwise. Business owners are under regular extortion threat. Police are impotent. Foreign residents living in high-walled compounds or in multinational corporate towers, are usually immune to these realities. But they affect local people daily.
Gangs have power because district governments are either powerless to stop them or are in cahoots with them. The situation resembles Shanghai in the 1930s more than what Beijing should be in 2007. Huairou District epitomises how these gangs can operate outside the law. To survive much less expand, business operators must develop their own protection gangs. The situation makes Hong Kong triad movies look like a Sunday school show.
Last month, speeches at the National People's Congress rapped out how important it was for China to protect its environment.
Huairou District is zoned a natural tourism region where the environment is to be protected. Nevertheless in Guandi Village local gang leader Mao Xiaojun one morning wiped out an entire forest with his chainsaw thugs. The sole natural resource and economic feature of Huairou - its once-pristine natural environment - was decimated, making the district a national example of how environmental tourism should not be managed.
Local villagers no longer depend on agriculture having already switched to so-called eco-tourism. The gangs saw the value of pristine forests as a bargaining chip to extort money.