China's State Councilor Zhou Yongkang on Sunday called for a tougher crackdown on economic crimes to stem the economic losses they cause.

"We must improve the prevention of economic crimes to safeguard social stability and ensure sound order in the socialist economy," said Zhou during a conference on combating economic crimes.

"Our country is at a stage where economic crimes occur frequently," said Zhou, also minister of public security, adding that economic crimes undermine the market order and damage the public interest.

He mentioned various types of economic crimes such as illegal fund-raising, pyramid selling, tax evasion, smuggling, intellectual property infringement, commercial bribery, and manufacturing and selling counterfeit goods.

"We must do our best to catch the criminals," he said.

Statistics show China has dealt with 21,889 cases of commercial bribery involving 5.3 billion yuan (US$676 million) since it started a clean-up campaign in 2005.

The country cracked 3,377 pyramid selling cases in rich and poor regions from January to October 2006, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

In pyramid selling schemes, people are recruited to make payments to others above them in a hierarchy while expecting to receive payments from people recruited below them. Eventually the number of new recruits fails to sustain the payment structure and the scheme collapses, with most people losing the money they paid in. China banned pyramid sales schemes in 1998.

(Xinhua News Agency April 30, 2007)