China’s police experience rousing success in their war again organized crime. From Times of India:
Chinese police have cracked nearly 500 criminal cases and busted over 4,000 gangs since it launched a crackdown against mafia-style crimes in February 2006, the state media reported on Sunday. The police had so far referred 340 cases of alleged gang crimes for prosecution, a spokesman of the office for national campaign against organised crime said.
More than 4,000 criminal gangs were wiped out during the campaign, he said. Thanks to the crackdown, the number of serious crimes including homicide and robbery has dropped in the first half of this year, he was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency. [Full Text]
As blogger Chen Guang notes, while they busted an average of 7 gangs a day during the crackdown, police are claiming only a 10% success rate. In other words, China is home to at least 40,000 gangs.
Read related Chinese article on Shanghai historian Su Zhiliang, who claims responsibility for the first appearance of the word “Chinese Mafia” in the Chinese dictionary. Su also published a book on the subject, “Chinese Mafia in Contemporary Shanghai,” in 1991.
