China’s security system urged to handle duties with ‘passion’ as pressures mount

China’s top security officials said the country’s security and law enforcement apparatus must “shoulder their responsibility with passion” as external tensions put more pressure on China’s internal stability.

“At present, the international and domestic situations have undergone new changes, and the task of maintaining national security and social stability is arduous and onerous,” wrote Yin Bai, secretary general of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the Communist Party’s top security organ, in an article on Friday.

It was published on the front page of the Study Times, the journal of the Central Party School, where China’s political stars are trained.

The commission oversees the entire law enforcement and security system in China, which includes millions working for the police, prosecutors, courts and secretive state security agencies.

“The people’s higher expectations for fairness, justice, peace and security have put forward new requirements for the building of the political and legal team,” he wrote. He acknowledged that the security and law enforcement systems still had “many inadequacies” in work discipline, coordination, ability and quality to meet the demands of the tasks they faced.

He ordered the Chinese law enforcement system to swear “absolute loyalty” to the party led by President Xi Jinping, “resolutely follow the party’s decisions, and resolutely avoid what the party prohibits”.