Beijing police will soon be equipped with advanced transceivers with Global Positioning System (GPS), which will significantly speed up their response to riots or other emergencies.

It is the latest effort by the capital's police in the lead up to the 2008 Olympic Games.

The new digital transceivers, which look like ordinary mobile phones, can cover larger areas with better talking performance than the old analogue ones, said Liu Ying, head of the Communication Division of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.

"GPS can help the command-centre locate a police officer in an emergency and dispatch nearby police to reinforce him," Liu said, adding that the new function can better protect the personal safety of police officers.

Moreover, the new transceivers, much smaller than the old bulky ones, can send and receive text messages and pictures.

"This will facilitate the process of getting intelligence support to the police officers wherever they are," Liu said. "For instance, the command centre can send pictures of a fugitive and other such information to the patrol police on duty."

Besides, the new walky-talkies, whose digital signals have all been enciphered during transmission, are more secure than the old analogue ones, which can be easily eavesdropped by other receivers with the same frequency, Liu said.

The public security bureau started replacing the old transceivers with the new ones on Thursday. The first batch of 29,000 new walky-talkies will go to the city's patrol police, traffic police and neighbourhood police, all of which stand in the front line for public security.

Almost every police officer in the city will be equipped with the new transceivers by the end of this year, Liu said. Previously, each patrol car, no matter how many police were in it, was equipped with only one transceiver.

Liu said the coming National Day celebrations will be a good opportunity to test the performance of the new transceivers and communications between different security departments.

(China Daily September 19, 2005)