politics - China needs more police

One guaranteed way to get a discussion on China going outside China is my favorite statement that this country needs more police.
I had to think about some interesting encounter I had over this statement when I read today's Reuters dispatch (copied from the official newswire Xinhua) on corruption in the police force. China is still perceived as a classical 'police-state' and especially people who have only seen Beijing and Shanghai cannot imagine that the shortage of police is an acute problem. The article says that almost 8,000 police officers have been punished last year for negligence, "58.7 percent more" than in 2002. We do love those very precise statistics.
Most police officers are very much underpaid, poorly equipped and hardly trained for the duties they have to perform. Outside the large cities policing is done so poorly that Mafia-like organization are a better tool to maintain maybe not law, but at least a certain level of order.
But unfortunately does not fit the cliches the outside world likes to hear about China.