Like in other places and times in Asia, the Fear of the Black Man takes on different forms, and is expressed in different degrees and brutalities. You think we need to be careful of our police state here? Get a load of this very scary scene from a macbre, high speed techno action flick complete with Tarantinoesque levels of violence. I don’t think they got to eat chicken and breakdance back at the station either. Time to jump on the Boycott the 2008 Olympics Bandwagon, Folks:

Beijing Vice: a brutal bust reveals the strong arm of the Chinese law
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 11:55 AM
By Melinda Liu

Where have all the foreign drug dealers gone? Ask the men in black. Beijing expats are buzzing about a weekend crackdown in Sanlitun that struck many of us as more brutal than the norm. (Yes, here brutal can be the norm.) With Beijing pouring controversial investments into Africa — and preparing to host the 2008 Summer Olympics — you’d think officialdom would want to avoid incidents perceived to have racist and repressive overtones. Like rounding up dozens of black men — reportedly including the son of a Caribbean ambassador — and beating many of them in public during a drug raid. Pan Yali (an expat who’s using his Chinese name due to fear of retaliation) filed this eyewitness account about the bust:

One sees shocking things in China. Sometimes they are also not surprising. That they are not surprising may be one of the most disturbing things of all.

Saturday night, I hesitantly pedaled into a small street in Sanlitun, the bar area most popular with expats in Beijing. It is a shoddy, miniature replica of some of the most unappealing carnival-esque streets in the world, the Fourth Circle of Western expat-in-Asia bar hell, a circus that Bosch would appreciate. Two weekends ago, an Australian architect — a former contestant on the TV show Big Brother — ordered a drink at a bar here at 3 AM, then slumped over his table, and never woke up. (Drugs or foul play were suspected, but police dropped the case for lack of evidence.) Tonight the entire cast of characters was out in force: drunken foreigners, the locals who “love” them, the shady bar owners, the homeless children and their decrepit pimps, the flower-sellers and the African drug dealers.

And then, the young men in unmarked black jumpsuits wielding batons.  Read more