Let's talk about Security (2)

My musing on the topic of security today is prompted by the fact that I got a bit riled up last week over this post by a fellow Beijing laowai blogger in which he made light of the recent spate of pre-Olympic bar closures, and even suggested that some of these closures might be justified by "security concerns".

The venues to which he referred were those around the Workers' Stadium.

These venues are within the Stadium complex, but have been separated off from the area immediately around the Stadium itself by a high, robust wire fence, a fence which will no doubt be heavily guarded by soldiers, attack dogs, and closed-circuit TV cameras placed around it every few yards. It is therefore impossible to conceive how the continuing operation of these bars, restaurants, and nightclubs would give anyone the opportunity of improper access to the Stadium itself.

The entertainment venues concerned are far enough away from the Stadium that it is impossible to conceive how they might be used as a base for some kind of terrorist attack on the Stadium - unless someone somehow managed to smuggle in a rocket-launcher of some kind (taller residential and office buildings in the vicinity are much more of a risk for that kind of thing). And since access to these venues is restricted, it would be perfectly possible to subject their customers to the very same security checks that the spectators entering the Stadium itself will undergo.

If the authorities' concern was that a bomb attack might be made on one of these businesses..... well, it tends to be rather easier to infiltrate a place to do something naughty like that when it's derelict.

And if, as blogger Boyce suggests, the authorities' concern is simply that they might look bad if some sort of incident should happen in one of these places...... well, why these places in particular? Is it purely because of their proximity to an Olympic venue (not the main Bird's Nest Stadium - this is a much older venue that's only going to be used for some of the football)? If that is the case, where do you draw the line? Wouldn't a bomb or a shooting in a coffee shop 20 yards over the road from the Workers' Stadium be just as bad? Wouldn't a terrorist incident anywhere in the city while the Games are on - whether inside an Olympic venue, next to a venue, or far from any venue - be just as bad?? If this were the rationale, then everything on the main roads along the four sides of the Workers' Stadium complex ought to be closed as well. And everything along the North 4th Ringroad (where most of the main Olympic venues are).

[In fact, it's not even clear whether all of the Workers' Stadium is being closed down. Only the restaurants and nightclubs at the North Gate seem to have been mentioned in the press. What about the discotheques and the bowling alley on the west side, or the Blue Zoo aquarium at the south end? Are they still open? That would make a complete nonsense of the security argument in favour of the closures!]

Luckily, even this government isn't quite daft enough to believe that the way to achieve security against terrorist threats is to close down every possible target. Not quite daft enough. At least, I hope they aren't.

I think The Telegraph's Beijing correspondent, Richard Spencer (a contemporary of mine at Oxford, though I don't think I ever met him back then), hit the nail on the head the other day when he suggested that the crackdown on the nightlife scene was all about 'image' rather than terrorism - and in particular that excessive revelry by laowai (and a certain class of young Beijinger) might prove shocking to Chinese Olympic visitors from the provinces, naive and simple folk experiencing their nation's capital for the first time.

Yep, that's what it's all about, I think. "Legitimate security concerns", my arse!