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http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=852867
Guns in China
The wild east
Nov 8th 2001 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
Armed crime is rising sharply in a country that
once prided itself on its
law-abiding orderliness
ONE midnight last month, two
brothers and another man
went on a killing spree with a
double-barrelled shotgun in
Dayukou, a mining village
500km (310 miles) south-west
of Beijing. Within an hour they
had killed 14 people and
seriously injured three others.
Among the casualties were
four village officials.
China once haughtily regarded
crimes involving guns as a
manifestation of American
decadence that hardly affected
its own, better regulated,
society. In urban China at
least, this may have been true
a decade or more ago. But now even official
publications admit that the
numbers of gun-related crimes are
soaring—though they are still far less
common than in the United States—and that a
huge black market has
developed for everything from shotguns to fully
automatic assault rifles.
Official figures offer no basis for useful
comparisons with America. China's
police release only minimal statistics. These
do not include the number of
people killed or injured by gunfire, or the
number of crimes involving firearms.
“The government thinks it's a government
affair,” says Bai Jianjun, a
criminologist at Beijing University. The only
gun-related figure included is the
number of cases involving breaches of the
firearms regulations— 26,456 last
year, up nearly 7%. But these cover only
misdemeanours such as unregistered
possession of a hunting gun. Moreover they
include only those cases that the
police have chosen to investigate—and a book
published last year by the
Chinese People's Public Security University
suggests that even among serious
offences (of any type) only 30% of reported
crimes are in fact investigated.
Less official sources offer occasional clues.
According to China News Week,
more than 500 police officers died in the line
of duty last year, up from about
360 in 1996. The magazine quoted “experts” as
saying the increase was
related to the rise in armed crime. Another
report, published in May, said that
armed crimes increased by 26% in 1994. Despite
a national campaign in 1994
to tighten control of firearms, armed crimes
rose a further 19.5% the next year.
In the first half of the 1990s, said a study
published in 1998, more than
10,000 armed crimes were recorded, two-thirds
of all violent crimes in China.
China certainly has stricter gun-control
regulations than the United States,
including a law introduced in 1996 which
stipulates that even the crude hunting
guns commonly used in the countryside must be
registered with the police. But
criminals determined to acquire a gun can do so
with relative ease. Soaring
demand for firearms has ensured a good supply.
Many are smuggled in from
Vietnam and Myanmar, and increasing numbers
come from the Central Asian
states. Others are manufactured illegally in
China itself, or stolen from the
sometimes ill-guarded stores of rural militias
and the police. Chinese military
pistols were used in a series of crimes in Hong
Kong this year.
Demand for firearms is being fuelled mainly by
a surge in organised crime.
Having prided itself on all but wiping out
criminal secret societies after the
Communist takeover in 1949, the government
admits they are now coming
back with a vengeance. The police in Fujian
province, on the coast facing
Taiwan, say they have evidence of over 40
Japanese, American and Taiwanese
triads operating there. The gangs are usually
supported by corrupt officials,
including police.
Members are recruited both from the growing
ranks of the urban poor—the
millions who have lost their livelihoods as a
result of economic reforms—and
among the rural unemployed, tens of millions of
whom have been drifting into
urban areas in recent years in search of work.
The gangs engage in
kidnappings and robbery. They smuggle drugs and
guns and run the
burgeoning sex industries of urban China.
Organised crime has even penetrated the party
elite. Last month, courts
sentenced 16 officials for involvement in
corruption involving organised crime in
the large city of Shenyang in the north-east.
Among them were the former
mayor and a deputy mayor. Both received death
sentences, though the
ex-mayor's was suspended for two years. Dozens
more officials are expected to
be tried.
Most residents of big cities in China, though
increasingly worried about burglary
and mugging, are not especially concerned about
gun-related violence. In rural
areas and smaller towns, however, armed attacks
and robberies are becoming
increasingly common. Ill-protected rural banks
are frequent targets, especially
during the lean winter months. In May, the
authorities executed 14 members of
a gang accused of a series of murders and bank
robberies in central and
southern China. They allegedly had an arsenal
of 15 military guns, 23
shotguns, a hand grenade and two anti-tank
grenades.
Since early this year, the police have been
engaged in one of their periodic
“strike hard” campaigns against crime. The
figures hint at the scale of the
problem. Even in the well-ordered capital, the
police seized over 100 hand
grenades and 1,500 guns of various kinds
between April and August. In the
country as a whole, they confiscated 600,000
guns, including 8,800 military
weapons, between March and June. That brings
the total for the past five years
to an extraordinary 2.4m guns. How many more
are still out there?
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