Knife Registration

One of the hardest things to find in a Chinese supermarket is a knife. There are plenty of forks, and next to them you will find a range of spoons, but the concept of a knife going with a fork is still not widespread in China.

A small restaurant that I like serves, among other things, great fried eggs. They give me a fork and teaspoon as utensils most of the time - sometimes they give me 2 forks.

Anyway, the knife problem just got worse for the citizens of Beijing. You now have to register if you want to buy a knife:

     http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20120129000041&cid=1103

Totally agree with that, they are like golddust

Going off on a tangent I was on the intercity bus today and at the service station they had one of those shops that sells cheesy ornamental swords and at the cheap end were a couple of baseball bats 
left my camera in my suitcase tho

That would explain why I couldn't find a knife at our local supermarket to cut up the dragonfruit the inlaws bought over spring festival.

Paring knife black market?

Are they going to put serial numbers on the knife blades so they can track them? The story doesn't say.

Huh. My dad just bought my husband a big set of sharp knives at Carrefour. I'll have to ask him if he was required to register. Luckily we have all the knives we need -- like most people. Requiring people to register to buy knives isn't going to do anything about the millions of knives that are already in circulation . . .

Are they going to put serial numbers on the knife blades so they can track them? The story doesn't say.

Doubt it! That would make the system logical and effective.

Looking back, it seems that Guangzhou introduced similar regulations in 2010:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-09/14/content_11301292.htm

Were they effective?  Did anyone notice?  

I wonder if George will be compelled to comply with the regulations? If so, I wonder what he would say?    

Good grief. This is a weird fantasy that I thought I'd never see actually happen.

Decades back, I was seriously irritated by a bunch of people who turned what was supposed to be a forum for discussion of the C programming language into a tirade on guns, rights, laws, ... One of my comments ran approximately:

Look. Can we all agree that nobody has a right to personal thermonuclear weapons and on the other hand, nobody should need permits for their kitchen knives? If so, then it is just a question of where to draw the boundaries. ...

I got attacked for that by both sides, and have refused to participate in such debates ever since.

Yep...it's amazing how people will morph a forum on a given topic into all kinds of weird things.

This is going to be a tough line to walk for the Chinese. In a land where almost no one has guns, including most police, most serious violence in China happens with knives.
On the other hand, their own cuisine is based on the use of big, sharp cleaver-like knives...you gotta have one in order to cook almost anything.

banning knives is stupid, hand to hand you can use anything as weapon. break a bottle or glass in half and it does much more damage than a knife....

The more I think about this, the more annoying I find it. Obviously, this was never intended to have any practical application in terms of curbing crime. The amount of organization required along with the existing weaponry in every kitchen make it impossible for this to be remotely effective for anything.

This is just more crap that's supposed to give the appearance of proactive laws protecting the people. You know, like security checks on the subway/train or virtually every security guard I've ever encountered in front of a residential complex/university. In all senses, if someone really wanted to do harm to someone, getting around these obstacles would be extremely easy- they only make life more annoying for those of us that actually follow the rules anyway.

This is a bit off topic but anyhoo;
Last summer a mate and I were driving down a highway just outside of Nanjing when I noticed about 40-50 people dotted along the road. First I thought they were hitch-hiking but on closer inspection they were all holding machetes, cross-bows or handguns! We slowed down to have a look and lots of them came running up to our car. It turns out they were from T and were selling them. They quoted a price of 550RMB for the crossbow and a few hundred for the machete but as I didn't have the cash on me I took his phone number instead. Rang it a few months later and it was disconnected:(

Don't think you would need to register for these

Hmm...so you have to register to buy a knife and then you can carry it everywhere as long as it is sheathed....yeah, that is definitely going to be really effective against knife-related crime...just about as effective as the traffic laws that I have been informed China does actually have....

The more I think about this, the more annoying I find it. Obviously, this was never intended to have any practical application in terms of curbing crime. The amount of organization required along with the existing weaponry in every kitchen make it impossible for this to be remotely effective for anything.

This is just more crap that's supposed to give the appearance of proactive laws protecting the people. You know, like security checks on the subway/train or virtually every security guard I've ever encountered in front of a residential complex/university. In all senses, if someone really wanted to do harm to someone, getting around these obstacles would be extremely easy- they only make life more annoying for those of us that actually follow the rules anyway.

Don't know if I agree. In a lot of cases having a person there makes a big difference, it's a bit like how you close your door even though anyone healthy could get into your house if they wanted to. Most crime is opportunism not plans, having some guy sitting there drinking tea and reading the paper does put people off a lot of petty crime....

It's the same with the people when you' get on the bus, you could easily sneak anything past the xray machines if you wanted to, but it's that broken window effect. It makes a difference to petty crime not major crime. And petty crime is much more common.

For example if you contrast inside and outside a bus station in China, you have all of the dodgy taxi drivers and pickpockets and just general idiots outside because there are police inside. The police inside are just operating an Xray scanner and drinking tea, but it does work....

It's been like that for a while in Beijing.
I remember trying to buy a meat cleaver at Walmart about 6 months ago and was asked to go and get the purchase approved at a special knife counter before i could buy it. Having waited half an hour in line already, I told her to keep the knife.

That said, I bought a nice one from my xiaomaibu just a few days ago with no problems...

I gotta go buy up as many cheap knives as I can at my local market. I'm gonna take off the stickers and put on "Henckel Zwillingwerk" stickers and sell them at 500% markup. That you China, land of opportunity!