China’s violent crime rate drops to lowest in 2 decades
Beijing, Feb 15 (EFE).- China said Wednesday it recorded last year the lowest rate of violent crimes in the past 20 years.
The Supreme People’s Court (SPC) said the rate of crimes like homicides, thefts, and kidnappings would make China one of the safest countries in the world.
CSP’s Deputy Prosecutor-General, Sun Qian, told reporters that the percentage of violent crimes classified as the most serious declined to 3.9 percent in 2022 from 25 percent in 1999.
Some 85 percent of all criminal cases processed in 2022 were minor crimes that carry sentences of less than three years, he said.
According to Sun, the declining rate of crime helped increase the sense of security from 87.5 percent in 2012 to 98.6 percent in 2021.
Over the past five years, China has prosecuted 42,000 cases related to organized crime and more than 3,600 people known as ‘protective umbrellas’ – a term reserved for government officials involved in such crimes.
Some 78,000 government officials and staff members were accused of corruption.
Of these, more than 100 occupied provincial, ministerial, and other high-level posts, CSP reported.
Moreover, a total of 11,000 people were prosecuted for offering bribes, Sun said.
President Xi Jinping began an anti-corruption campaign after his rise to power in 2012 in which various senior Chinese officials have been convicted for accepting bribes worth millions of dollars.
The campaign has uncovered several cases of corruption but some critics said the drive was also used to end the political careers of Xi’s rivals.
Prosecutor Sun said thefts, which led the list of the most serious cases for more than four decades, were replaced by other crimes like drunk or rash driving in 2019.
Furthermore, cybercrime showed an upward trend as 129,000 were accused of the same. EFE
jco/ss/ssk
