zlacker

I actually found that most of the police in China are not particularly scary. I'm sure they can mess up your day if they wanted to, but the day to day officers are unarmed, not particularly physically imposing (lots of normal looking men and women). They wear a sort of light blue office collared shirt.

Outside of big cities it gets even more lax. You just see police officers hanging out like regular people. I once saw an old guy get into an argument with the cops that looked like an argument between two people, not between "officer and civilian". In the US that wouldn't happen, the officer would feel slighted and probably arrest that guy, or the guy would never dare to talk back to a police officer in the first place.

But to your point I suspect the military police is very brutal.