Ah Yin, an office worker in Shenzhen, talked lightheartedly about how her two bicycles were stolen last summer from the residential compound where she lives. Thefts are so frequent in the Special Economic Zone that she was hardly surprised or upset when she found them missing one morning. 'Someone must have sneaked in after the gates were opened by children going to school,' she recalled.
Hers is a relatively minor loss compared to fruit wholesaler Hung Wenlung's , who was robbed of 4,000 yuan (HK$3,712) on a bus while on his way to work two months ago. He had felt a tug at his jacket but paid no attention until after the neatly dressed young man sitting next to him got off. That was when he found the jacket pocket sliced open and his money gone.
He didn't report it to officers of the Public Security Bureau (PSB). 'There's no way of finding the culprit anyway,' he explained.
Whether it's because residents have become resigned to it or due to poor policing, Shenzhen has degenerated into a hotbed of crime.
At the annual Shenzhen Municipal People's Congress, Mayor Li Zibin openly acknowledged the need for increased anti-crime measures, including tightening the migrant population and stepping up police manpower.
'We are determined to make greater efforts to crack down on crime,' he told the delegates.
'We may not be able to resolve the problem in the space of a year, but we hope the situation will generally improve.' Although the crime rate dropped by 17 per cent last year, he admitted the law and order problem was still serious. Two factors are exacerbating the problem: the mobile population of unemployed migrants from poorer regions in China and the infiltration of Hong Kong triads.
