As part of the fact-checking process for our FAQ on Ministry of Public Security (MPS) contact information—and keeping in mind previous reports that the National-level MPS Foreign NGO Management office initially didn’t have anyone answering the phone, The China NGO Project called all of the provincial Public Security Bureau Foreign NGO Management Offices to verify the listed phone numbers were correct and that an employees would pick up at the other end.
As we note in our FAQ answer, only about half of the provincial offices answered when we called. (For offices that listed two contact numbers, if the first didn’t pick up we called the second number. If no one answered at a particular office, we tried a second time on a different day.)
For those offices where someone did answer the phone, the majority of employees we spoke to were solicitous and friendly, asking multiple times if we needed information beyond verifying that the phone number was correct. The Qinghai office employee who answered the phone even offered to provide the personal mobile phone number of a colleague who was out of the office that day.
Do you have experience calling these offices yourself? Let us know if you’ve reached an office we haven’t. And tell us what happened when you did.