A nationwide blitz in the first seven months of this year has resulted in arrests in thousands of serious criminal cases, including murder, kidnapping, rape, robbery and arson.

Police solved 15,287 serious criminal cases in the January-July period, according to an official from the Ministry of Public Security.

“The number of solved cases is 21.7 percent higher than the same period last year,” said the official from the ministry’s Criminal Investigation Bureau. “More than 81 percent of the crimes committed between January and July have been solved.”

For example, police in the city of Datong, in north China’s Shanxi Province, arrested murder suspect Feng Jianbo during a night patrol on June 26. After questioning, Feng confessed that he and accomplice Wang Jincheng had murdered three taxi drivers during robberies in Beijing.

The ministry also organized a series of anti-counterfeiting campaigns in Hebei, Henan, Hunan and Hainan provinces and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

On July 30, police in the city of Tangshan, Hebei Province, transferred suspect Zhang Jiandong and three accomplices who had produced fake milk powder to a local procuratorate for prosecution. Investigations revealed that Zhang’s company had sold 230 tons of inferior milk powder nationwide since July 2003, earning the company some 2.6 million yuan (US$307,000).

Modern technology, such as the Internet and DNA testing, is playing an increasingly important role in making arrests.

With the help of the Internet, 5,386 escaped criminals, including nine Class A and 24 Class B suspects on the ministry’s wanted list, were apprehended. That is a rise of 75.8 percent from the previous year.

More than 3,300 longstanding homicide cases were also solved.

Recently, police in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Shaanxi Province joined forces to identify and arrest people suspected of killing three Japanese tourists in Shaanxi’s capital city of Xi’an 11 years ago.

(China Daily August 26, 2004)