Railroad Police - China, People's Republic Of

China, People's Republic Of

The governing body of almost all railroad operations—the Chinese Ministry of Railways, who is also the owner of a great deal of the country's rail network, operates a massive police force that provides security service inside major railroad hubs and stations and outside along the railroads. Basically their jurisdiction extends to the limit of MoR property, yet occasionally the jurisdiction overlaps with local forces, in case it was an offence that occurred inside MoR facility, or related to MoR operations.

Despite that legislatively, the police force of all Mainland China should answer only to one collective central government and should be considered a single entity, their various source of funding makes them de facto local police force indeed. Therefore the railroad police of PRC can be considered as the only civil police force that under the command of an agency of central government, more precisely the MoR. Its branches distribute in parallel to the railway bureaus of MoR, and for a period of time, was considered its subsidiary, since the "railway bureau" is an entity of mixed nature: as a government agency as well as a corporation. Consequently, some railroad police agency will cover several regions of operation of provincial level. For example, the division level Tianjin railroad police force will answer to the prefecture level Beijing railroad police bureau, despite the fact that regular police force of Tianjin is collateral to its Beijing equivalence. While supervised by the Ministry of Public Security, the force was funded exclusively by MoR itself, therefore often was criticized for protecting corporate interest under MoR. Since it is prevalent in PRC that local police force was conscripted as a private army of individuals, such criticism actually reflects the dispute between local and central government at some level.