The central role of China’s police force is to protect the Communist Party regime from popular uprisings, the country’s most senior police official has said.

Speaking in an address marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of modern-day China, public security minister Zhao Kezhi said that “maintaining social control” and “safeguarding political security” were top priorities for the security forces.

It comes as Human Rights Watch identified China in an annual report as one of the biggest threats to human rights worldwide, listing incidents in the past year where the authorities cracked down on individuals’ freedom of expression and public protests.

China stopped publishing its interior security budget in 2014, after figures showed it had outstripped military spending for three years in a row.

And while its police force has long been tasked with stamping out any challenges to the Communist Party’s supremacy, such efforts have intensified under Chinese president Xi Jinping, who has displayed increasingly autocratic tendencies, according to Human Rights Watch, and last year did away with presidential term limits.

Mr Xi and other party leaders attribute grassroots movements for political change to “Western” influence, and likewise refer to concepts like democracy as tools wielded by the West to further its own aims. In July last year, a court sentenced prominent political cartoonist Jiang Yefei to six and a half years in prison for “subversion of state power”.

“(We) must firmly defend our national security, with regime and system security at its core, and firmly defend the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and our nation’s socialist system,” Mr Zhao told the meeting of ministry personnel in Beijing.

China’s police must “stress the prevention and resistance of ‘colour revolutions’ and firmly fight to protect China’s political security,” he said.

The term “colour revolution” refers to popular uprisings experienced in the mid-2000s by the former Soviet states Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, which saw the removal of long-established rulers and the election of new heads of state.

China cancels Christmas Show all 7 1 /7 China cancels Christmas China cancels Christmas A man sells Christmas decorations on a street of Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas a promoter dressed as a teddy bear rest along a retail street in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas A family walk past images of Santa Claus in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas A worker guards the entrance of a shop decorated with images of Santa Claus in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas Sales staff from an apparel shop dance wearing Christmas themed costumes to promote a year end sales in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas Sales staff from an apparel shop dance wearing Christmas themed costumes to promote a year end sales in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas a sales person waits for customers near a Christmas tree decoration in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Historians have since argued that these movements created periods of great instability without a corresponding breakthrough for democratic values.

Chinese officials have previously mentioned such uprisings as a warning to their own people about the trouble that might result from overthrowing long-standing governments.

The Xi government is pulling out all the stops in 2019 to show off the achievements of the People’s Republic as it marks its 70th year.

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The centrepiece of the celebrations will be the Beijing Expo, a five-month long trade fair featuring exhibits from more than 100 countries and international organisations, which organisers say will attract 16 million visitors.