China merges several hotline call services in an effort to streamline the urban emergency system
　　
　　
　　Chances are that if you find yourself in a crisis situation in China, dialing the correct emergency number could be a problem. Not because there isn’t one, but quite the opposite.
　　China has four main emergency response numbers―110 summons police help in a life-threatening situation, 119 brings out firefighters, 122 gets police activated to sort out traffic accidents and 120 ensures medical help. Along with these there are also specialized numbers for sea rescue and other daily hotlines. In the country with the world’s biggest population, the amount of emergencies is proportional, and along the way things can get very confusing.
　　For example, when a vehicle bursts into flame on a highway, do you dial 119 for fire emergency, 110 for a life-threatening situation, or 122 to report the subsequent traffic chaos.
　　To simplify what is proving to be difficult for the public, at the 20th anniversary of China’s 110 introduction on January 10, the Ministry of Public Security announced that by the end of 2006 all public security branches at municipal and county level must have completed the integration of hotlines 110, 119 and 122.
　　According to Wang Jikun, an official from the Ministry of Public Security, “After the integration, people can dial 110 to report all emergency situations.”
　　Wang said that there is lack of coordination between the emergency units and rapid response personnel and often more than one unit arrive on the scene at the same time. From this perspective, integration of emergency calls is motivated by the streamlining of resources.
　　Cheng Renhua, Director of the 110 Headquarters of Ministry of Public Security, said the goal of integrating three emergency numbers is to establish an intensive, unified and effective commanding system featuring unified leadership, sharing of information, classification of cases and quick response.
　　Many countries around the world use a single number for emergencies. For example, 911 in the United States, 999 in Britain and 110 in Japan. Of all the emergency calls in the world, the city of Chicago responds the quickest, with a time of 1.2 seconds on average. The 2.9 million Chicago residents pay “911 taxes” of $1.25 per month for the emergency services they get.
　　
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　　Urban emergency services refer to the assistance provided for accidents and calls for urgent aid through a unified number. When residents find themselves in a difficult situation, they can get help from the police merely by dialing the emergency number.
　　In April 2002, Nanning City of south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region became the first city in the country to initiate an urban emergency response system. When a resident dials any of 110, 119, 120, 122 and 12345, the call for help is located on the system’s digital map and quickest response is selected from available resources. In October 2002, a fire broke out in a coalmine trapping over 30 people underground. It took the emergency center 38 seconds to dispatch various response teams after receiving the call for help. In 23 minutes, vehicles from four different emergency units, police, firefighters, traffic police and medical services all arrived at the scene. This reaction speed was unthinkable before the establishment of an emergency system.
　　The outbreak of SARS in 2003 has forced China to put the urban emergency reaction system on its national agenda. In 2004, the Ministry of Public Security decided that county and city level public security offices should integrate the three emergency numbers into one within three years.
　　By the end of 2005, over 900 public security branches at county and city level, or 42 percent of the total, had partly realized the integration of emergency calls. Shanxi, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces have completely fulfilled the integration. Over half of county and city level public security branches from Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangxi have partly completed the mission.
　　On January 8, the State Council publicized an overall public emergency plan to enhance the government’s ability to guarantee public security and handle emergencies. Two days later, the Ministry of Public Security made the decision to bring the deadline for integration of emergency numbers one year ahead.
　　Wang Taiyuan, professor of Chinese People’s Public Security University, said, “The combination of 119, 122 and 110 is the first step toward final integration.” The combination of operational techniques and communications technique is classed as partly completed integration, while complete integration refers to total unification of working principles and command centers and the build-up of administrative staff.
　　
　　What about 120?
　　
　　One important question asked about this combination is why the campaign has excluded 120 for medical emergencies.
　　
　　Wang Kaiping, an official from the Shanghai Medical Emergency Center, explained, “Telephone operators of 120 emergency centers need to have high-level expertise not only in coordinating vehicles, but also in giving medical instructions.” Under current circumstances, he said it is difficult to accomplish the complete interaction between the medical emergency and the other three integrated emergency calls.
　　However, another expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the bottleneck is a lack of coordination among different departments. All of the three emergency calls of 119, 122 and 110 fall under public security authorities, making the integration much easier. Meanwhile, the 120 emergency call is under the administration of medical authorities, which renders inter-division merging much more complicated and efficient coordination more demanding.
　　
　　Launching non-emergency calls
　　
　　Since the first emergency center on the Chinese mainland was launched in southern Guangzhou City in January 1986, all public security bureaus of prefecture level cities and 95 percent of county level public security branches have launched emergency call services. In 2004, the total number of emergency calls received amounted to more than 110 million nationwide, up 56 percent over the previous year and equivalent to 3.5 calls per second.
　　However, among the emergency calls, many were for trivial matters, which wasted the resources of the service. Cheng Jiulong, Vice Director of Shanghai Public Security Bureau gave an example. A night-shift worker who had just come back home from work dialed 110, saying that he was too tired to go out and he wanted the police to deliver his breakfast for him.
　　While such an example is an extreme case, in practice many 110 calls are made for non-emergency situations in daily life, such as resumption of water and electricity supplies, being locked out of one’s home and asking directions.
　　To make things worse, many calls were fake. According to rough statistics from Tianjin police authorities, of the 7,000 emergency calls they received every day, nearly 30 percent are practical jokes and vicious harassment. Similarly, of the 2.14 million emergency calls in Hubei Province in 2005, nearly 38 percent were prank calls. The emergency calls received by Shanghai 110 headquarters average over 30,000 every day, of which only one third belong to emergencies demanding police aid.
　　Therefore, Wang Jikun from Chinese Ministry of Public Security suggests that besides 110 emergency call, another non-emergency call be introduced to relieve pressure on the police. Wang believed that China could learn from the United States, which sets up a non-emergency call 311 to address complaints over things like graffiti, snow-clearing and urban noise.
　　Professor Yuan Jixi from Renmin University of China also put forward a proposal to introduce a hotline for hidden safety problems in Beijing. His theory is that China’s public safety is riddled with loopholes, one in particular being the public mindset surrounding when to call the police out to assist the public. Many citizens still relate alerting the police with major crime and serious accidents, while they believe perhaps more minor safety issues are not worth reporting the police. He gave an example of a loose billboard that might collapse and cause an accident in event of a strong wind. This situation would not be reported to the police, not because the inherent danger was not realized, but because there was no community correlation between this perceived danger and getting the police involved to help prevent a potential problem. The situation, Yuan believes, is attributed to the failure of family, school and society to educate citizens on when police should be alerted on matters of public safety. Before drafting the proposal, Professor Yuan visited a lot of residents, who shared his worries.
　　Currently, most citizens assume that 110 is to report criminal cases, such as murder and robbery, but not for reporting everyday trouble. Thus Yuan’s proposal is to address two safe issues: first to arouse government’s attention to safety concerns in people’s daily life and second to stress the need to establish sound police alerting channels through opening hotlines.
　　Some Chinese cities have already taken the lead in this aspect. Qingdao in Shandong Province launched a service to assist with water, electricity and gas supplies on October 1, 1996. This service center, which handles more calls than the city’s 110 emergency center, has 50 telephone operators, some of whom come from related companies. Wang Jikun commented, “Such a trial proves effective in relieving pressure on the police who are then free to answer more life-threatening emergencies.”

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