Put that wacky baccy back in your pocket, leave your sidecar motorcycle and its dodgy plates at home and wipe that smug look off your angular foreign face - laowai are no longer above the law.

At least that was the message from Beijing's police chiefs last week as they announced new plans for dealing with foreigners who violate some of the city's more minor laws. The police reckon everyone should be treated equally, whether you're driving an unlicensed moped, caught toking on a spliff or nabbed setting off fireworks before the start of the Spring Festival.

For years, foreigners, and Westerners in particular, have been able to break a whole ream of rules, confident in the knowledge that the cops were more likely to turn a blind eye than go through the bureaucratic hassle of dealing with a "big nose".

But now the boys in blue want that to change, and who can blame them. Only the most obnoxious, arrogant and frighteningly disillusioned amongst the expatriate community could seriously argue against foreigners and Chinese getting equal treatment at the hands of the law.

That's not to say that I won't feel a slight twinge of sadness when, and if, (and I think we have to assume this is a big "if") these new treat-everyone-the-same rules come into affect.

I'll admit, I felt a certain sense of smugness the day a friend and I were pulled over by the police for riding a moped with illegal plates. He waved us on with little more than barely concealed frustration when we whipped off our helmets to reveal our foreignness, like ugly Peking Opera singers lifting up their masks. You could see what he was thinking: "Oh God, foreigners. They won't be able to understand a word I'm saying, they'll try to babble on in crap Chinese, I'll have to take them to the Aliens Section of the Public Security Bureau and then fill out a mountain of paper work. Way too much hassle."

And there's something uniquely satisfying about using your foreignness to push the boundaries, whether that's trying to sneak a camera into Mao's Mausoleum (a big no, no, I discovered) or simply trying to cycle through a Beijing park (also frowned upon).

But, being the muesli-munching, sandal-wearing liberal that I am, I have to shrug and reluctantly welcome this new drive towards equality, like a fat person being told to diet. And if it means fewer over friendly drug dealers in Sanlitun (what do they expect you to say to "hey man, how's it going?" anyway? "Oh, you know, not too bad. Long day at the office, had a good meeting with the boss but my girlfriend's giving me stick about not doing the washing up...??") and the clichd sight of a foreigner riding a side-car motorcycle becoming less common, it can only be a good thing.

Contact the author at thomasmackenzie@hotmail.com

(China Daily 02/07/2007 page15)