Police have launched a nationwide crackdown on major crimes in an effort to solve a batch of serious cases and to pursue and capture a large number of escaped prisoners.
Public security authorities also said they were determined to break Mafia-style gangs.
The law and order problem in China has become more and more serious with increasing incidents of violent and organised crime, particularly in the booming southern part of the country.
Several recent cases where victims and bystanders have been killed have shocked the whole country and led to demands from the public for protection.
Police admitted that the number of serious criminal cases this year had risen, Xinhua (the New China News Agency) said in a report yesterday.
In the first two months of the year, the number of major cases placed on file for investigation and prosecution had jumped 12.6 per cent compared with the same period last year.
In 1995 more than 700,000 - or 41 per cent - of the 1.69 million criminal cases documented by the Ministry of Public Security involved violent crimes.
