China orders crackdown on crime

By Willy Wo-Lap Lam\\ Senior China Analyst

HONG KONG, China -- Beijing has ordered a 90-day nationwide crackdown on crime and other "unstable factors in society."

The decision to launch a so-called Strike Hard campaign was made by the Politburo a day or so after the series of explosions last week in the city of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, which killed more than 100 people.

The Communist Party's Commission on Political and Legal Affairs has given orders to the police to target "major criminal cases," underground gangs such as triads, and criminals on the run.

The alleged main culprit of the Shijiazhuang bombings, a 40-year-old deaf Hebei resident named Jin Ruchao, is still at large.

And the Minister of Public Security, Jia Chunwang, has personally supervised efforts to arrest Jin and his accomplices.

In the past year, practically all provinces have been hit by vicious cases of bombings, bank robbery, kidnapping, and the blackmailing of government offices and big companies.

A security source in Beijing said the authorities had decided to launch the Strike Hard campaign because these crimes were perpetrated in most instances by gangs that had access to explosives and sophisticated weapons.

The source said the Commission on Political and Legal Affairs also asked police and prosecutor's offices to "speed up the arrests and prosecutions."

Courts were asked to "speed up judicial procedures and sentencing in accordance with the law."

Under instructions from President Jiang Zemin that destabilizing social and political forces must "immediately be nipped in the bud", the Commission has also recommended stiff punishments, including execution, for incriminated felons and gang leaders.

Beijing analysts said the authorities first launched a Strike Hard campaign in the mid-1980s, when the motorcade in which late leader Deng Xiaoping was traveling was set upon by thugs in the provinces.

Since then such anti-crime crusades have been launched several times, most recently last year.

However, they said, the law-and-order situation this year was particularly bad. And Beijing's apparent inability to stop the bombings and other vicious crimes had hurt China's image at a time when it is applying to host the 2008 Olympics.

It is understood that since the Strike Hard campaign targets destabilizing elements in general, groups such as underground pro-democracy organizations or the quasi-Buddhist Falun Gong sect may also be hit.

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