Last fall, when the days began to cool, I stopped going through security checks. I still carried my messenger bag with me, but now I could hide it under a peacoat and pass unmolested into the subway. It was great, until I realized that someone with a bomb could probably do the same thing.

Everyday, millions of rational, thinking human beings trudge through the Beijing Subway and place their bags on a magical conveyor belt designed to protect us from acts of violence on public transportation.  But it is utterly meaningless pageantry.  To me, the Beijing security check is truly an existential encounter—I’m overcome with the realization that what I’m doing is completely meaningless.  Here’s why.

The Introduction of the Security Check
The Beijing Subway began operation on October 1, 1969, on the 20th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. And for the next 39 years passengers rode in peace and safety, barring the odd electrical fire (November 11, 1969—3 dead, 100+ injured) or construction tunnel collapse. But on June 29, 2008, that peace was shattered, replaced by fear of something happening at the upcoming Olympic Games. The government allocated 3,690 security officers to the 123 subway stations in town. The officers were stationed at subway entrances and diverted travelers with bags to security checkpoints (an X-ray machine and a dude with a security wand).  The requirement was a logical step, following the pre-Olympic bombings in Xinjiang and Yunnan, but, as we now know, nothing happened. This could be seen as a triumph of the transit authority, who found myriad contraband on passengers going for a ride, but, more soberly, it was simply because no one felt like killing anyone on the subway during the Olympics.

Post-Olympic Hypocrisy
After the Olympics were over and declared a great success, suddenly everything disappeared. The potted trees arrayed along dusty streets, bomb-sniffing dogs at the airport, all gone. But the subway security check remained. Personnel was cut down—instead of six or eight people manning each entrance there were two to four, depending on the time of day.  Today security officers, who are more like station attendants, will blurt a perfunctory, “Please take your bag to the security check,” when you enter the station but most will not care if you walk past without so much as glancing at the machine. At some stations where there is a bottleneck you can’t get away without scanning your bag unless there are lots of other people.  As you might imagine, when there is a crowd, the attendants can’t keep track of who has gone through the checkpoint. In other stations, as long as you drift toward the machine the attendants will let you go, even if you don’t actually place your bag on the conveyor belt.  Of course, this is all moot if you just hide your bag.

Some attendants, if you ask them, will look in your bag instead of having you go through the machine.  The more dutiful ones will place a hand in your bag and fumble around to see if anything is ticking.  Late at night most attendants just don’t care.  When I come home around nine or ten, they are usually standing around socializing and looking at the clock.  The only practical reason I can think of for keeping the security check, is to keep people employed.

Interestingly, after the Olympics, the government got rid of the requirement that ticket sellers on buses must examine oversize bags brought aboard. Although this regulation was meaningless to begin with—the bus bombings in Yunnan and London were done from the side of roads or discarded briefcases on the buses and plus, if someone had a bomb in an oversize bag and the ticket seller asked him to open it, he’d probably just press the detonator—it’s odd that the government would repeal this rule, seeing as how buses can carry as many people as a single subway car, if not more.

The Stranger and the Subway
What the security check proves is that the vast majority of people do not want to kill others on the subway.  Whew.  Because if you really wanted to kill someone,  you would find a way past the security check.  It doesn’t take a criminal mastermind. In essence the security check does nothing to protect us; it is an opiate, an illusion that ironically makes us oblivious to real dangers.  All it takes is one Meursault, one act of violence, planned or otherwise, to shatter our gentle beliefs.  To quote William Carlos Williams, that which is possible is inevitable.  To prevent such an incident, the only two solutions are, 1. to make the check so rigorous that it would almost assuredly remove the possibility of an attack—I’m talking airport security: metal detectors, pat downs—but that would be a massive inconvenience and deeply unpopular; or 2. to remove all security apparatus entirely and stop wasting everyone’s time.   The situation as it stands today, deters only criminal dilettantes—those who would love to kill someone but are too lazy to think of a plan that circumvents a security check.

Coda
Last week saw a tightening of security, almost back to Olympic levels, as the National People’s Congress and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference got underway, which suggests that the government doesn’t really care whether you live or die—only if you die at a time that’s inconvenient for them.

A few days ago I saw a foreigner with one of those big bags migrant workers carry. He was stopped at the security check and an employee was asking him why he had packed two knives. I was shocked, and thought for a second that the security check had saved me, but the only thing it proved was that the man was too dumb to hide the knives on his person.