by Louisa Lim
In China, government critics call it "the era of stability maintenance." It's their label for the government's policy over the past decade of prizing internal stability above all else, no matter the cost.
Beijing this year is spending $111 billion on its domestic security budget, which covers the police, state security, militia, courts and jails. This is now higher than its publicly disclosed military expenditure.
Three scenes illustrate how the state security apparatus targets individuals, as well as groups of people, and how the system feeds off itself.
SCENE ONE: Retired film professor Cui Weiping is a small, tidy woman in her 50s with a radiant smile and an easy laugh. It's difficult to imagine anyone who looks less threatening.
But for the past nine years, state security has monitored her movements, ever since she co-wrote a letter expressing her support for a group of mothers whose children were killed on June 4, 1989, the day the government cracked down on protesters in and around Tiananmen Square.
Her phone has been tapped, her car followed, her life subject to directives from state security agents.
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