The Chinese police authority has complained it is short of manpower in the country's vast countryside, although crime rate is falling.

The claim came on the heels of a police announcement that more than 30,000 new police stations had been set up in villages nationwide and nearly 70,000 police had been deployed to rural areas.

"Our major difficulty, at present, is the manpower shortage in the vast rural areas, which we consider to be in urgent need of police presence," said Bao Suixian, deputy head of the Public Security Management Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security, at a Tuesday press conference.

Bao said the ministry planned to establish police offices in each of the 700,000 villages in China, home to nearly 900 million people.

"To some extent, the country will be peaceful if the rural areas are tranquil and stable," he said.

But according to the latest police statistics, violent crimes were down in the first ten months of the year throughout China. Police investigated nearly 3.75 million crime cases, down 1.1 percent from last year, and solved 2.21 million of them.

Murder in the rural areas dropped 16.5 percent while rape was down 8.2 percent from January to October. But the police did not reveal the actual figures.

"A great number of disputes and unharmonious elements exist in China. In the face of such pressure, it is impossible to rely solely on the 1.8 million-strong police force to maintain stability in a country with 1.3 billion people. Police forces need more manpower," Bao said.

Police officials said the number of murders and assaults stemming from trivial disputes over marriage, family affairs or paying debts has been rising steadily in recent years. Such disputes accounted for the cause of nearly 36 percent of murders in the first ten months.

Last week, a senior police official disclosed that 17,900 mass demonstrations were handled nationwide in the first nine months of the year, down 22.1 percent on the same period last year.

Public Security Vice-Minister Liu Jinguo warned that China's fast urbanization posed public security concerns in suburban areas and in relatively developed parts of the countryside.

On Tuesday's press conference, the ministry's spokesman, Wu Heping, said the demonstrations were not "rural riots". He instead chose to refer to them as people raising issues of interest.

"Some people adopt an irregular way to appeal for their interests. Their actions disturb public order and sometimes break the law. Police are just trying to maintain social stability in accordance with the law," Wu said.

He said the decline of such incidents was a result of painstaking efforts by grass-roots governments to solve problems and disputes before they turn sour.

Source: Xinhua