Following the recent deadly knife attacks on schoolchildren, China's Ministry of Education has issued an emergency circular which requires education departments at all levels to work with the local finance departments to tighten campus security.
The ministry says that maintaining campus security and protecting students will be a top political task for the country in the future. The ministry requires all schools to strengthen on their security and take effective measures to block illegal persons from entering schools, by enhancing their security facilities and reinforcing their guards.
Meanwhile, the ministry instructs education departments to go to the grassroots and to offer security guidance to the schools. The ministry states that a national team will soon be in place to launch a national campaign on campus security.
The ministry states that head teachers of schools and kindergarten principals shall be personally responsible for campus security.
In the past 40 days, five bloody incidents have taken place in schools in different parts of China, with the deaths of a dozen pupils and injuries to many others. So far, a number of cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, have drawn up measures to ensure campus security. In Beijing for example, the city government has distributed police-issue fork shaped restraint poles to schools to help them overcome gangsters and other illegal intruders.
