China's police are to intensify crackdown on rural crime after a string of incidents targeting farmers.

The police are ordered to "severely crack down on all sorts of crimes that affect rural economic growth and infringe upon farmers' rights and interests", according to a document of the Central Committee for the Comprehensive Management of Public Security.

Theft of livestock, irrigation facilities, farm machinery and robbery are areas that need to be dealt with more harshly, according to the document.

It also orders cracking down on prostitution, gambling, drug taking and buying or selling under coercion.

The document urges improving the system to dissolve disputes in the countryside and take the initiative to tackle dispute-prone issues, including burden on farmers, land contracts, land expropriation, environmental pollution, unpaid wages and disposal of collective assets.

Security hardware, including iron door, iron window, iron cabinet, and warning devices, should be promoted in some rural areas based on local situations.

According to a meeting on public security held on Monday in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi province, an increasing number of pyramid selling schemes have emerged in rural areas.

Last year, police in Shandong Province broke up a pyramid selling scheme that involved more than 160,000 mostly rural people from 15 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.

The organizers lured farmers with promises of lucrative returns in return for a 2,900-yuan admission fee to join a cosmetic selling scheme. The farmers were asked to persuade more people to join, but the cosmetic under the brand "Duomeizi" was fiction.

The organizers pocketed more than 400 million yuan. Many farmers lost their personal savings.

Officials at the meeting urged the police to strike hard on rural crimes, such as homicide, illegal explosive trade, robbery, gambling, drug trafficking and pornographic publications, and to clamp down on organized crime.

(Xinhua News Agency April 17, 2007)