Xinhua News Agency reported today that the government will take measures to curb crimes committed by the country's large urban migrant population during the second half of the year.

Wu Dongzhi, director of the Public Security Ministry's public order department, said police have been ordered to strengthen inspection of places with dense migrant populations, such as small hotels, construction fields, markets, recreation grounds and the suburbs of major cities.

Increasing economic opportunities in urban regions have attracted nearly one hundred million former rural farmers, especially to the relatively developed coastal areas.

Urban migrants, who have typically received poor educations in the villages where they grew up, often experience terrible living conditions and extremely low salaries, and some turn to crime. The Xinhua report said that these crimes were increasing.

In 2004, public security departments dealt with 687,000 cases involving urban migrants, which accounted for 12.7 percent of the national total.

The number of urban migrant suspects arrested was 604,000, 40 percent of the total in the same period, sources with the ministry said.

According to Wu, crimes committed by urban migrants were mainly theft and robbery. Urban migrants accounted for nearly half the total number of suspects arrested in these kinds of cases in major cities last year.

Wu recommended that tougher regulations be implemented to supervise rented houses in cities with large migrant populations.

Last month, China Daily reported that 25.6 percent of the population of Shanghai and 33.7 percent of Beijing's were migrants, with higher proportions in some coastal regions.

(Xinhua News Agency July 6, 2005)