Don't give Obama any ideas.
From
The Economist, an excerpt (click on link for full story):
SEVERAL dozen officials from Beijing are wrapping up their three-year tour of duty in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. In early July a replacement team will arrive to carry on their work. Among those due to return to Beijing is Zhi Haijie, who is likely to be praised for setting up a new surveillance system in Lhasa.
It was launched in April 2012 in Lhasa’s Chengguan district, where Mr Zhi has been serving as deputy party chief. Officials call it the “grid system of social management”. One of its main aims is to make it easier for officials to monitor potential troublemakers by using intelligence gathered by community workers within areas known as grids (
wangge in Mandarin). ...
Lhasa is already crawling with security personnel and festooned with surveillance cameras. Even before the grid system any Tibetan who raised a protest banner would be leapt on within seconds and taken away (though few such attempts have been reported since security was increased after riots in 2008). ...
In both cities grid staff are helped by patrols of volunteers wearing red armbands: usually retired people whose role as local snoops long predates the introduction of grids. Human Rights Watch says that in Lhasa these patrols have become more intrusive with the recent immolations, searching homes for pictures of the Dalai Lama and other signs of dissent. Along with the rollout of grids, the Tibetan authorities have been organising households into groups of five or ten. A leader is appointed who becomes a point of contact for grid officials or police wanting information about members of the group. In May Tibet’s party chief Chen Quanguo said these groups should be the “basic unit” of the system, “ensuring…no blind spots”. ...
