CHINA’S SOUTHERN city of Guangzhou has a new hero – “Rollerman”, a bespectacled foreigner on roller blades who has taken to challenging government vehicles breaking traffic rules downtown.
Rollerman is an unlikely superhero, being more Clark Kent than Superman, in a red T-shirt, often wearing his backpack or clutching his shopping in a brown paper bag as he points at the signs being flagrantly ignored by the cadres.
In an atmosphere of growing hostility towards abuse of privilege by government officials, public dissatisfaction about land grabs, police torture, official corruption and unhappiness about rising prices in China, Rollerman has his fans. However, others are concerned it takes a laowai, a Chinese expression to describe a foreigner, to intervene to stop the cadres breaking the rules.
“In the evening I always see cars doing this on that road and I give them an angry stare. We should call this foreigner a hero, if we all acted like this . . . we’d be charged with disrupting state security,” said one web commentator. “But that it takes a laowai to help us sort out the business of the road is shameful.”
Chinese number plates are colour-coded to indicate which sector is using the car – most plates are blue, foreigner plates are black and official government plates are white. The silver people-carrier being challenged in one photograph of Rollerman is an official’s car, and some have identified the plate as belonging to a branch of the military or public security.
Motorists routinely do not stop for a green pedestrian light, sounding the horn at anyone who dares to try to cross on green. But the rise in the wealth among corrupt officials, and arrogant behaviour in their new cars, is a major source of irritation. For a government mindful of keeping a firm grip on single-party rule, clearing up growing public anger about abuse by officialdom features high on the order of business.
Xu Zongheng, ex-mayor of Shenzhen, also in Guangdong province, received a suspended death sentence for taking bribes, two years after he was sacked. The 2009 arrest of the former car technician who had served as mayor since 2005 was part of a broader corruption investigation and an attempt by Beijing to bring the free-wheeling economic powerhouse under control. Officials can be seen whizzing along the breakdown lane, horns honking, in Audi limousines or in Porsche SUVs. Many are clearly not on official business.
“There’s no way that we could behave like Rollerman. take bullying us citizens as their right . . . only foreigners can do this, not us,” wrote the commentator.