A man stabbed two officers of the Urban Administration Bureau in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province while they were on patrol around 6 p.m. on August 20. One of the officers was stabbed three times.

The Urban Administration Bureau, known as Chengguan in Chinese, is a uniformed municipal security force. Their duties include keeping order on the streets and ensuring that vendors are properly licensed. According to the Asia-Pacific Edition of the International Herald Tribune on January 9, 2008, peddlers and streetside hawkers frequently accuse Urban Administration officers of bullying and abuse.

The Information Times reported on Aug 25 that a man with a 12-inch long knife suddenly rushed out from behind and stabbed one of the two Urban Administration officers, Ma Jinjing and Tang Luorong, who were patrolling the area of Tianhe District.

The man stabbed Ma’s left and right shoulders. Ma tried his best to escape but the man chased him and stabbed his right arm too.

The other officer, Tang, after seeing the situation take a turn for the worse, immediately dragged the injured Ma to the nearby Urban Administration unit.

According to Tang, Ma’s uniform was soaked in blood and his arm and shoulders kept bleeding.  They sent Ma to the hospital and reported the incident to the police. The attacker didn’t dare to chase them there and escaped after seeing the two returned to their unit.

Ma was treated in the emergency room of the Tianhe District Hospital. He was given 14 stitches. The wounds on his shoulders were 3 and 2 inches respectively. The doctor said that he would need about one month to recover.

The famous Chinese Web site NetEase (www.163.com) is conducting a survey on the incident, with two choices offered:

“Yes, I sympathize. This Urban Administration officer is innocent.”  Or

“No, I don’t. Urban Administration officers’ vicious acts provoked the stabbing incident.”

Out of 2019 votes cast so far, 94 people have voted “yes,” which is 4.7 percent of the total vote, while 1925 voted “no” occupying 95.3 percent. The voting results are supposed to be published at: http://news3.163.com/vote/vote_results.jsp?voteid=7155 after September 1. However, this web page has been removed.

The attacker has not been arrested yet.

In recent years, violent incidents against heavy-handed Urban Administration officers have occurred quite often. One such incident occurred on January 8, 2008 when an urban administration officer beat an innocent citizen, Wei Wenhua, to death.

Read the original article in Chinese