Fears in 'safest city in the world'

By JOHN ARMSTRONG in Shanghai

It is the one thing everyone prefers not to think about. It is the one thing everyone cannot avoid thinking about.

Even the most thick-skinned among the 11,000 delegates in Shanghai for this week's Apec summit will have pondered the obvious - this is the No 1, gold-plated terrorist opportunity for any Osama bin Laden, real or wannabe.

Not only are Bush, Putin and company hitting town. The conference venue in the Pudong economic zone is just a few hundred metres from two of Asia's tallest buildings, the 420m, 88-storey Jin Mao Tower and the slightly lower Oriental Pearl Broadcasting and Television Tower, which is doubling as the media centre for the 3000 journalists covering this political extravaganza.

Perhaps all this makes Apec too obvious a target. If the world has learned one thing about terrorism, it is to expect the unexpected.

Shanghai's mayor obviously thinks so. He proclaims Shanghai to be "the safest city in the world". That is the kind of boast a politician almost certainly lives to regret, even though his city is telling Apec delegates they are protected by a net from the earth to the sky.

But it is a boast made in the knowledge that every conceivable apparatus of this huge, one-party state is devoted to avoiding a loss of face, his and China's. So, if that means temporarily refusing visas to citizens of Middle Eastern countries, so be it. If it means closing the local insect museum because President Bush's hotel is nearby, so be it.

Anything to cocoon Shanghai for the next three days.

And Shanghai has bunkered down - and almost closed down. Many of the city's 13 million inhabitants have been granted an enforced public holiday until Monday. The message from authorities: stay out of town.

The streets are eerily empty, punctuated only by the police at every intersection waving on the dribbles of traffic.

Cross-town trips which took a lifetime now take just minutes. The expressways are truly expressways.

In Pudong, the skyscraper-strewn glass-and-steel reminder that China will become the century's economic giant, roads have been closed altogether. One almost expects to see tumbleweed billowing down the pavements in the breeze.

Hordes of People's Liberation Army troops are being deployed at checkpoints on the outskirts of the city as part of a mobilisation of 10,000 armed police and ID-checking security personnel.

A mere handful were on view outside the International Convention Centre, where Apec foreign ministers have been meeting for the past two days. But they blanket the city, backed up by a phalanx of red-shirted Apec "volunteers", drafted to ensure foreigners know where they are going and do not go where they should not.

The city's flash hotels, which have ratcheted up their room rates in best capitalist fashion to exploit a captive market, have installed x-ray machines and metal detectors in their lobbies along with scrum-loads of security guards.

That is standard for Apec. Not so standard are the jet fighters that the state media say are patrolling the skies above the city as well as escorting the aircraft bringing the presidents and prime ministers when they enter Chinese air space. Naval boats patrol the Huangpu River, which weaves through the city.

Leaving nothing to chance, a nationwide sweep of criminals rounded up 23,000 fugitives.

The Police Daily, published by the Ministry of Public Security, said most were sought in connection with violent crimes such as bombings, murder, kidnapping and robbery.

"Police forces nationwide launched blanket searches in key areas and used the internet as well as compact discs to spread information about fugitive criminals and suspects still at large."

For all that, the security in Shanghai, though pervasive, is not totally intrusive. The usual drone of police helicopters that accompanies such events is peculiarly absent; the standard wailing of police car sirens muted.

That will change today as motorcades criss-cross the city carrying the Apec leaders to pre-summit one-on-one meetings with each another.

Shanghai will hold its breath until some time on Monday when the last leader has left town.

Full coverage: Apec 2001