Chinese city tackles crime 'the British way'

SHENZHEN, the leading city in China's efforts at economic reform, is taking a page out of Britain's book and planning to install 200,000 surveillance cameras, in an attempt to lower its soaring crime rate.

The former fishing village has transformed itself in the past 25 years to become one of China's most important cities with a population of 11 million. But there has also been a negative side - crime has blossomed.

To tackle the problem, this year the city is adding 200,000 CCTV cameras along major roads, at junctions and in the subway. Currently, there are only 20,000 such cameras.

"We are strengthening investment in technology, to use technology to strengthen the control of society and monitoring of public security," Xu Zhongheng, the mayor of Shenzhen, said.

"In this regard we've taken particular note of Britain, where basically everyone lives under the electronic eye."

He made particular reference to how important cameras had been in tracking down the perpetrators of attacks on London's transport system last year.

While Shenzhen has been at the forefront of China's market reforms, it has also developed a reputation for being chaotic. Reports of robberies, kidnappings and gang violence are common. "There is no city in China where public security management is as difficult as in Shenzhen," the mayor admitted.

The city has also added 6,000 police to the local force, bringing the total to nearly 18,000.

Shenzhen is the busiest entry and exit point in China. Last year, 159 million people left China via Shenzhen - 55 per cent of the national total, Mr Xu said. "This leads to domestic and international criminals picking it as an important passageway."

Furthermore, only about one in seven people who lived in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, had official residence, or "hukou", in the city, he said. The rest either lived there for the medium term or were migrant labourers.

That meant a large portion of the population felt less responsible for the city.

Last year, the number of major criminal cases in Shenzhen fell by 31 per cent compared with 2004, and the incidence of roadside theft cases fell 37 per cent, Mr Xu said.

One issue that the mayor did not address was the protests, known as "mass incidents", which have been on the rise in China as the country grapples with a widening gap between rich and poor, widespread corruption and increasingly easy communication through the use of mobile phones and the internet.

Shenzhen has been the focus of many mass demonstrations, including one in January involving thousands of karaoke bar and massage parlour owners and their employees, who were upset about an anti-vice campaign.