China Series #4: Police State

Our Chinese tour guide was a nice guy. He was also either brainwashed or a liar. I think it was the first of the two. Talli asked him if the Chinese government spent much on the military. He said no, not much at all. I have pictures that show otherwise. Of course, he could just mean that they pay their military poorly compared to other countries. The following pictures are of the security forces just in Tiananmen Square. The first picture is of one of the police at the perimeter of the square. The second picture is of two gray uniformed security forces that the guide said were "private" security guards. Sure. Private. Private guards guard government squares all the time. They're some other group of government security, maybe a different police group. We saw these police many times throughout our travels, but the next picture shows the forces that we saw in, by far, the greatest strength. I know that it doesn't look like there was much security so far, but this picture should reinforce my point. This was a group of green uniformed soldiers that was marching through the square. I think they were going to relieve some of the soldiers on one side of the square. I could be wrong though. They could have just been showing their strength by patrolling the square. Suffice it to say that there was a lot of security. I wouldn't have screamed out "Mao Zedong was a kook!" I would have been locked up in seconds. In response to a question Paul asked me to verify during our trip, there are no McDonald's in Tiananmen Square. Sorry, Paul. Mao Zedong was not staring lovingly across the square at Ronald McDonald. That would have been creepy, but funny. He was staring across the square at his tomb. That's creepy enough for me though. Who wants to stare at their own tomb?