The Public Security Bureau (PSB) of Kunming, the capital of China's Yunnan province, instituted an armed police foot patrol in the city Aug. 3, ostensibly for the city's Communist Party Conference. Chinese media began featuring pictures of the patrols Aug. 4, and Chinese "netizens" on the microblogging site Weibo have been asking the purpose of the patrols. According to PSB Deputy Director Zhang Yuming, more than 1,000 armed police are involved in 24-hour patrols and 100 checkpoints are set up across the city, for which he did not specify an end date. Pictures from Kunming show that many of them are armed with rifles and marching in formation. Heightened security is common for major events, but this is a much larger show of force than usual. Zhang claimed that crime is worse in the summer and that these police are being mobilized to enforce order — and that may be true. The patrols do appear pre-planned, and given the gear being carried, this is not an emergency response. STRATFOR sources also report that this was a planned mobilization. The question then becomes how long ago the patrols were planned. If it was planned months ago, the mobilization is likely a show of force for the conference, but if it was recent it would indicate rising concern about security and perhaps that something else is afoot in Yunnan province. Armed police are mobilized often in China for major meetings, national events or during times of insecurity. During the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the police presence in Beijing is very high, but it does not involve this level of armed foot patrols and usually affects the numbers of regular police only. During the Spring Festival in Beijing, another common time for heightened security, only around 100 armed police were on mobilized patrol in a city almost three times as large as Kunming. Other examples involve major riots like those in Urumqi in 2009 or the recent unrest in Inner Mongolia. Kunming, however, could be unique in demonstrating its police forces. This year the city put on a major demonstration of armed police exercises in June and put a new police helicopter to use in March. The city's PSB has been on a major campaign against crime in the last few years. Kunming also is the main transit point for goods moving from Thailand and Myanmar into China — which also means drug trafficking and associated crime. Given the large nature of this patrol, there may be other security concerns in Kunming. The official explanation could be true, and this could be a political effort by Kunming's leaders to show their ability to fight crime. But the PSB could also have intelligence that unrest is brewing, or even that an attack like the 2008 bus bombing is being planned. (A training exercise for riot police also was held Aug. 3 in Chengdu, which is in Yunnan's neighboring province of Sichuan. While these were not police patrols, riot police are often part of the special police unit structure within a PSB that would also include the type of armed police used in Kunming.) Potential unrest could be related to a July 15 protest at a flour factory, where seven senior workers were beaten by security guards (video of the incident has circulated online), but that is not likely. Nevertheless, Kunming officials probably decided this unusual show of force was important for a reason greater than a Party Conference.