Fresh faces of China's brutal enforcers

He wanted the female members of chengguan - China's burly enforcers of urban order, feared and despised for their capricious crackdowns and penchant for violence - to convey a certain impression to a clutch of onlookers.

"Stand straight! Look sharp! Show residents what pretty girls are like!" Four barely-past-teenage girls in white gloves and identical olive jackets and pants snapped to attention. Four pairs of black pumps lined up ruler-straight. Four prim hats perched perfectly atop hair bound in blue and white striped bows.

More than one government has tried to brush up the image of China's urban inspectors. One city mandated that all new recruits have a college degree. Guangdong Province changed the grey-green uniforms to a supposedly more inviting blue. Wuhan, in central China, substituted stare-downs for strong-arming: in 2009, one report stated, 50 officers encircled a wayward snack cart, glowering steadily for a half-hour until the peddler packed up and left.

Xindu, an urban district of 680,000 in Chengdu, has chosen major image surgery with the district supplementing its urban street police with 13 women, specifically chosen for their looks, shapeliness and youth. The idea is to give the rough-hewn police a softer, feminine side.

Unfortunately, even Scarlett Johansson might struggle to raise China's subterranean regard for these city squads.

And for good reason, critics would argue. Unlike the police, these officers are authorised only to enforce city ordinances by imposing fines and other administrative penalties. But the Chinese news media routinely portray a different reality.

In January 2008, Hubei Province inspectors beat a bystander to death after he used his mobile phone to film them breaking up a protest against a waste dump. Last year, a training manual for Beijing inspectors, pilfered and posted online, described how to effectively thrash offenders without drawing blood.

This year, a Shanghai watermelon peddler was left brain-damaged after a scuffle with five officers. One violence-soaked video game, available for download online, features Chinese-trained inspectors who assault street vendors.

"Chengguan has scarred the government," China Daily, a national publication, lamented last year after yet another controversy over tactics. The paper demanded a "truly thorough clean-up."

Sceptics say the approach here falls far short of that. After the district advertised for eight new female recruits in October, an editorial in the Beijing Evening News questioned whether the women had actual duties or were simply scenic diversions.

The answer appears to be a little of both. The district's advertisement called for female applicants 18 to 22 years old, with a good figure and "the five facial features in proper order". They should be above-average height - taller than 1.6 metres or 5ft 2? inches. Retirement at age 26 is mandatory. Officials said the job was physically too arduous for women over 25.

"Their image is the important thing," one unnamed district official told a quasi-governmental website. "First, the candidates' external qualities will determine if they make the cut, such as height, weight, facial features, etc." Next comes temperament and "inner qualities".

Female chengguan are like flower vases, he said, adding: "Besides being vases, they will have other responsibilities."

Zheng Lihua, the deputy director of the district's city management bureau, is not eager to endorse that description. But he noted that height requirements were standard in many Chinese job advertisements for both sexes. So is the demand for orderly facial features.

Whether that means good-looking is a matter of debate among Chinese. Certainly, the disabled or disfigured need not apply. "We can't let a lame person or a hunchback come to serve here," Zheng said. "His image would not be good."

Liu Yi, who patrols the Baoguang Square near a monastery, is 22, apple-cheeked with a finely curved mouth. She does not consider the stress on her appearance to be sexist, she said.

"Do you think I look sexy in this uniform?" she asked with a wry look. Her dimpled co-worker, 21-year-old Xu Yang, added: "Our job is to present the city's image."

They do not object to their limited tenure either, they said, because they harbour career ambitions greater than simply shooing vendors into the alleyways where they are supposed to confine their business. Every morning, the squad faces off against a dozen or so peddlers who dart around on foot or bicycle, trying to sell as many buns or bowls of tofu as possible before they are run off.

The officers describe their duties as more monotonous than strenuous. "It is pretty much the same every day," said Huang Jing, 20, who studies marketing in her off hours. "Very routine."

One reason is that female officers lack the power of their male counterparts to confiscate vendors' goods. They can only threaten to report violators to their male supervisors. That tends to shield them from the sudden public displays of animosity against officialdom that are common throughout China. Xindu has so far escaped such violence. But calm is hardly guaranteed.