Politics aside. While seeming scary, this kind of device is actually widely deployed in China, especially in schools. It proves to be very effective for police use:<p>1. Dull tipped, won't penetrate bodies.
2. While in use, no direct body contact between you and the other.
3. Effective, since human doesn't really have much strength in the chest / stomach area.<p>I don't think Mirror chose a good picture for the use, this one's probably better: <a href="http://news.china.com.cn/txt/2010-04/30/content_19937607.htm" rel="nofollow">http://news.china.com.cn/txt/2010-04/30/content_19937607.htm</a><p>Honestly better than guns and more effective than shields.
>giant fork<p>Not a man catcher?<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_catcher" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_catcher</a>
> Potential injuries include burns, puncture wounds and welts<p>yet<p>> repeatedly do this without long-lasting identifiable physical traces, makes them a favoured tool of torture<p>if i understand this correctly it seems that the risks are either pretty low or the artifacts don't last very long.<p>anyway, is the mechanism similar to e.g. Taser? if so seems much ado about nothing here, American cops have been getting off on using those for decades
I think the bigger news is that China state media actually mentioned Tianamen Square yesterday and how the response to Hong Kong won't be a repeat because they have better tools now<p>and this is the tool?<p>what a twist!