People’s Public Security (人民公安) is the name of a periodical produced by the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China. For official use only, its primary intended readership consists of Chinese police officers.
Description
The first issue of People’s Public Security was published on 30 January 1956. The magazine initially appeared twice monthly. It superseded Public Security Manual (公安手册), a periodical in a smaller format published "for grassroots public security cadres" by the Central Ministry of Public Security, as it was then called, since 1952. The first head of the editorial committee of People’s Public Security was the then Vice-Minister for Public Security, Xu Zirong. Prior to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution the magazine was managed by Shi Luoming, whose husband was the political secretary of China’s first Minister of Public Security, Luo Ruiqing.
In 1956, People’s Public Security was printed in an edition of 140,000. By the end of 1957, cutbacks had forced a 50% reduction in the number of issues printed, and there were no longer—as there had been initially—photographs on the front and back covers. The last issue of People’s Public Security to appear before almost all PRC journals (with the exception of Red Flag) suspended publication at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution was no. 232, which appeared on 20 October 1966. It resumed publication at an unknown date in the 1970s.
People’s Public Security conveys information about policing and related developments in police and public security work in China. It is aimed at readers of all administrative levels in urban as well as rural areas. Its Q&A section sheds light on issues and problems affecting the quality of police work. In the 1950s and 1960s, it published vetted texts of many important speeches by leading public security officers and it is today of particular interest to historians seeking to understand the operation of Mao Zedong's dictatorship of the proletariat.
Copies of People’s Public Security from the 1950s and 1960s may today be found in research libraries. The publishers put out an electronic version of the journal, some issues of which may be read online.