The Chinese government will take measures to curb the increasing crimes by the country's large number of "floating people" in the second half of the year, said Wu Dongzhi, director of the public order department under the Public Security Ministry.

Chinese police have been ordered to strengthen the inspection of places with dense "floating" populations, such as small hotels, construction fields, markets, recreation grounds and the suburbs of major cities.

Increasing economic opportunities in urban regions have attracted nearly one hundred million former rural farmers, especially to the relatively developed coastal areas.

Urban migrants, who typically received poor educations in the villages where they grew up, often experience terrible living conditions and extremely low salaries. Some turn to crime for an income, becoming a problem for police.

In 2004, the public security departments dealt with 687,000 cases involving urban migrants, accounting for 12.7 percent of the total cases. The number of arrested urban migrant suspects reached 604,000, covering 40 percent of the total in the same period, sources with the ministry said.

According to Wu, the crimes committed by urban migrants are mainly theft and robbery. Urban migrants accounted for nearly half of the total number of arrested suspects in theft and robbery cases in 2004, especially in major cities.

Wu also mentioned that tougher regulations should be implemented to supervise rented houses in cities with large migrant populations.

About 25.4 percent of residents in cities and towns say that urban migrants usually commit serious crimes, including burglary, forgery and prostitution, according to a survey by the National Bureaus of Statistics (NBS).

Source: Xinhua