China in Holiday Mood, But Security Tight [Excerpt]

Oct 1, 2001

BEIJING, Oct 1, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) Much of China was in festive mood Monday on its National Day holiday, but authorities were keeping a vigilant eye on a series of perceived security threats.

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This year's National Day also coincides with the start of the lunar calendar-dated Mid-Autumn Festival, an auspicious match that happens only about once every two decades.

Around 60 million travelers are expected to take to the country's trains, planes and buses over the holiday period, with two million alone forecast to pack into Beijing.

By mid-morning Monday a fair proportion of those appeared to have already jammed into Tiananmen Square in the center of the capital -- from where Mao Zedong declared the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949 -- to enjoy the autumn sunshine.

Amid the camera-happy crowds and flag sellers doing a roaring trade were large numbers of uniformed security forces, with many plainclothes officers certain to be mingling in the throng.

With vast hordes on the move throughout the country, authorities face a security headache from a number of sources.

In Beijing, police were keeping a particularly close eye out for protests by followers of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual group.

On National Day last year around 1,000 Falun Gong protestors were at times brutally rounded up on Tiananmen Square in front of shocked Chinese and foreign tourists, causing severe embarrassment to authorities.

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In Beijing police have spent the past week checking the identifications of large numbers of people entering and leaving the capital by train, even comparing faces against a computerized gallery of wanted people.

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