Beijing: China's Communist Party rulers do not take any shortcuts when it comes to ensuring the security of their regime.

The extent of that lavish spending was revealed when the most daring street protests in decades erupted in Beijing and other cities, fueled by rage at the rigid and seemingly endless restrictions imposed to combat COVID-19.

For decades, the government has been preparing for such challenges, putting in place the machinery required to quell large-scale upheavals.

Police and paramilitary troops flood city streets in a massive show of force. Most protesters focused their anger on the "zero-COVID" policy that seeks to eradicate the virus. But some called for the party and its leader Xi Jinping to step down, speech deemed subversively.

The protests in China's capital, Beijing, were the most significant since the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. The People's Liberation Army crushed the demonstrations with tanks and troops, killing hundreds. During a wave of dissent by unemployed workers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the authorities focused on preventing organizers from linking up.

In 1999, members of the Falun Gong meditation sect surrounded the leadership compound in Beijing. Then-leader Jiang Zemin took the action as a personal affront. In 2008, when anti-government riots broke out in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, authorities responded with overwhelming force.

China's internal security budget reportedly tripled over the past decade, surpassing that of national defense. Millions of people were interned in camps, placed under surveillance, and forbidden from traveling. Xinjiang alone saw a tenfold increase in domestic security spending during the early 2000s.

The annual budget for internal security outnumbered that for national defense for the first time in 2010. China is a nation ruled by law rather than governed by the rule of law.

People in China can be charged with "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," punishable by up to five years in prison. Charges of subverting state power or "incitement to subvert state power" are often used. Those accused are usually denied the right to hire their own lawyers.

China's government has spent heavily on its security apparatus, but it's unclear how sustainable it is. The massive spending and sprawling internal security network leave China well prepared to crackdown on dissent. It also suggests "China's internal situation is far less stable than the leadership would like the world to believe."