Police get anti-terror training

Nearly 200 county-level police chiefs in South China's Guangdong province received one week of training including responses to violence and terrorist activities in the province from March 17 to Sunday.

The training, held at Guangdong Police College in Guangzhou, covered psychological counseling, State security maintenance, public security management and enforcement norms. A total of 196 police chiefs from 121 counties, 20 districts and 58 towns in the province attended the training.

The training is the first of its kind in the last 10 years in Guangdong, said Zheng Jiangtao, head of the training sector of the department, the newspaper said.

It has a special background that differs from other training programs in the past years. Currently, the police duties of maintaining social stability and protecting the public have become complicated and face great challenges following a series of terrorist incidents last year, Li Chunsheng, head of the department, said during the training.

"Police should do well in cracking down on violence and terrorist activities," Li said.

As county-level public security organs are important police forces in launching emergency responses to terrorists, they should improve their abilities in obtaining information and managing public security and prevent violence and terrorist attacks from happening, Li said.

"We should educate police on a basic level that they should have no hesitation in cracking down on people involved in violent and terrorist activities," Li said.

When the Global Times contacted an official of the department's news office by phone on Monday, he refused to comment on the training or give any details.

Anti-terrorism work by public security authorities has intensified greatly at all levels after the bloody Kunming attack.

Nationwide, China has strengthened training of police chiefs at all levels, improving their working abilities and innovating their working philosophy since 2009, Ren Shiying, head of the School of Criminology of the People's Public Security University of China, told the Global Times on Monday.