Thanks for your response, Charles. Wow, 120,000 informants in Chaoyang alone! This seems not only to be a costly surveillance system, but also a peculiar system of unemployment/pension/social welfare system against which any reform of the general social security/welfare system stands little chance. To improve social welfare so that it becomes reliable for most Chinese in order to lower their savings and increase domestic consumption would mean to cut the amount of such surveillance spending that goes into subsidizing those with the right connections and willingness to snitch. And I guess the latter would be hard to achieve.