China's police cracked 33,000 economic crimes in the first half of this year, 6.8 percent up over the same period last year.

The crimes involved 58.14 billion yuan (7.27 billion U.S. dollars) of illicit money, up a hefty 89.5 percent.

The information was released by Wu Heping, spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security at a regular news conference held here Tuesday.

"Overall, China's public security situation remained stable in the first half of 2006, as the number of major criminal cases all went down," said Wu.

Wu provided a raft of statistics in support of his statements. For the January-June period of 2006, homicide cases were down 14.9 percent over the same period last year, rape cases down 6.3 percent, arson cases down 17.5 percent and explosion cases down 18.3 percent, he said.

In the same period, the country witnessed 129,000 fire incidents which left 871 people dead and 991 injured and caused 394 million yuan (49.25 million U.S. dollars) of economic losses. All these figures were down over the previous period.

Prostitution cases were down 6.2 percent, gambling down 51.9 percent and drug smuggling down 20 percent over the same period last year, Wu said.

Police investigated a total of 1.811 million property infringement cases - mainly burglary and robbery cases - down 1.5 percent.

Overall, police filed 2.115 million criminal cases, down 1 percent, and cracked 1.185 million criminal cases, up 3.7 percent.

Wu said China had witnessed a significant decrease in juvenile delinquency in the first six months of 2006, with the percentage of people under 25 among arrested criminal suspects dropping by 6.5 percent year-on-year.

Arrests of 18-25 year olds were down 4.5 percent and arrests of people under 18 down 11.4 percent.

In recent years, China has witnessed an upsurge in juvenile delinquency. In 2005, more than 70 percent of the country's robbery cases were committed by juveniles.

In a bid to rein in juvenile delinquency, China launched a nationwide campaign in 2004, called "For Tomorrow", aiming to enhance law awareness among young people and encourage them to be disciplined and law-abiding. In July 2006, the Chinese government issued regulations concerning the environment around primary and middle schools, urging that illegal internet bars and karaoke bars near schools be closed down.

Source: Xinhua