There were more than 31,000 homicides cases in China last year and almost 90 percent of them were solved by police, the Ministry of Public Security announced on Tuesday.

He Ting, director of the criminal investigation department under the Ministry of Public Security, said China's murder-case rate was 2.39 for every 100,000 citizens in 2005.

The ministry says its research shows the murder-case rate was 5.61 in the United States, 4.00 in Canada, 3.64 in France, and 3.08 in Germany.

The ministry did not report on the total number of people who were murdered.

Since 2004, the ministry has launched a special campaign to solve murder cases, vowing to bust every murder case with the goal of decreasing the number of murder cases and the number of fugitive criminal suspects.

In 2004, Chinese police cracked 5,910 outstanding murder cases and in 2005, police busted 2,384 unsolved murder cases from previous years.

Source: Xinhua