Guangzhou has established a special team that will be inspecting documents of foreigners residing in the city, as an effort to improve its management on the growing foreign population, according to the city's local newspaper Yangcheng Evening News.
Based on the local government's data, about 118,000 legal alien nationals reside in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province in south China as of late October; 16,000 of which came from the continent of Africa. However, the official number does not include illegal immigrants, which is the problem Guangzhou is trying to address.
Guangzhou's special team is comprised of policemen--both uniformed and not--special force officials and interpreters. The team checks foreigners' documents such as residence papers and passports in areas where they frequent. If a foreigner is discovered to have no legitimate identification documents, the foreigner will undergo verification in a local police station.
The Yangcheng Evening News reported that the team already conducted a few rounds of inspections on Monday. There was no significant conflict, but some of the foreigners resisted the special team.
Due to the growing number of alien residents in Guangzhou, the local government has been stricter in its management and inspection efforts in the previous years.
One exit-and-entry officer from the city of Guangzhou said that one of the government's major goals is to stop cross-border crimes as aliens with criminal records enter and exit Guangzhou with illegitimate identification documents.
The officer also said that the city implemented a portrait matching system to better screen foreigners entering Guangzhou.