this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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I saw a half-dozen soldiers with automatic rifles stationed around Tienanmen Square. And (since some "grad" folks prodded me about this in the past) they were nowhere near government buildings. This is the same at several other locations I saw in Beijing. It was less common on Shamien Island, but Shamien is largely businessmen and tourists.
Whenever I saw a money/bank vehicle, there would be soldiers with what appeared to be shotguns. Hard to be sure, but they had the excessive-sized barrels I am only used to seeing in shotguns. I understand "protecting the money" (sounds much more capitalist than commy, just saying), but that was already more excessive than most countries.
To be fair, despite being pro-gun-ownership, I consider the US attitude of police officers carrying firearms at all times to be slightly excessive, so officers carrying the more intimidating weapons usually reserved for assault teams in the US is even more excessive to me. They seem to want very visible weapons for the same reason many of our left hate very visible weapons - the intimidation factor.
Thanks! I cannot know the circumstances of your visit, so I have to guess they are usually there.
Now for the pendantic bit: those are all technically small arms. Large arms would be pretty much weapons that can't be moved around readily without a truck or wagon. So a heavy machine gun would be a large arm, but the automatic rifles woild still be small arms.
I was the plus-one for my mother adopting a baby back when that was still a thing. A week in Beijing, and a week in Shamien Island. Mostly tour-guided, so I'm sure there's a lot of good and bad things about China I cannot account for. I was able to corroborate some of my red flags with several young and apolitical Chinese ex-pats years later. As such, I don't think China is nearly as bad as some people say. And I would still never want to live there.