So far this year Beijing police have solved 88 percent of the murder cases in the city. This is the highest detection rate in 20 years, the city's police bureau said yesterday.

The detection rate is 8 percent higher year-on-year which the bureau described as "remarkable" progress. However, no specific number of murder cases was given.

Zuo Zhijin, deputy director of the bureau's criminal investigation department, said the figures were due to good police work. "We treat murder cases as our top priority as they greatly jeopardize social stability," he said.

Zuo recalled a murder case which was solved last week. Beijing police stationed men in a rural village in northeast China's Liaoning Province for more than two months until they finally caught the suspect. The police involved had on occasions to brave temperatures of -10℃ and poor living conditions.

He dismissed remarks that forced confessions were behind the good results. Evidence collected by scientific and legitimate means were the only basis for successful prosecutions. 

Zuo leads a team equipped with one of the best ballistics laboratories in the world. It boasts an accuracy of 94 percent in shell case identification and 90 percent in bullet differentiation.

Better use of DNA sampling and the development of digital sound wave identification technology to detect a suspect by his or her voice also helped, Zuo explained. He added that the experience and skills of police officers were also important factors. 

The success rate is much higher than that of many foreign cities which usually is about 30 percent according to Zuo. He served in the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) in Lyon, France from 2000 to 2003.

Beijing police, however, are not satisfied with the results and will make greater efforts to achieve the goal set in 2004 by the Ministry of Public Security that "each murder case must be solved."

"It will be difficult," Zuo said. "In countries such as the United States that have no gun controls most of its crimes are committed with firearms. But here there are thousands of possibilities as to how a murder is committed."

In China there are eight categories of murder: manslaughter, intentional injury, explosion, poisoning, arson, robbery, rape and kidnapping cases that involve the killing of a person.

Last year 31,000 murder cases occurred in the country. Civil disputes such as divorce or neighborhood quarrels and property infringement were the major reasons, according to the ministry.

(China Daily December 8, 2006)