"Stability Maintenance," Mediation, and Chinese Hospitals

Official “stability maintenance” (weiwen) efforts in China have created pressures on local authorities to hold down citizen discontent and protests at all costs. This has also created markets for people capable of filling this role – the hiring of informally recruited security forces (or more simply - “goons”) by some local authorities being one example.

The May 31 edition of the Southern Weekend has an article on another element of this dynamic - the emergence of private firms who handle security/dispute resolution efforts in Chinese hospitals, all under the rubric of “mediation.”