MAO JINGXIANG SEEMED to be a model policeman. After entering the force at the age of 18, he rose through the ranks to become chief of police in Fuxin, a city of three million in the northeast province of Liaoning, for four years until his retirement in 1997.
Now Mao is one of the most wanted people in China. In May, the Liaoning Public Security Bureau tripled the reward for his capture to 300,000 yuan (about HK$282,000), one of the highest figures for a wanted person in the country, and has confiscated all his assets.
Mao has been on the run for more than a year with his wife and niece after an arrest warrant was issued for bribery, embezzling public money, selling jobs in the force and other crimes.
Mao's case is said to be the tip of an iceberg of police crime, corruption and abuse of power. 'The problem of senior police officers breaking the law and professional discipline is especially serious,' Jia Chunwang, Public Security Minister, told the standing committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's parliament, earlier this year.
Song Haobo, director of the China Society for the Study of Crime, said: 'The number of cases of police corruption is increasing, and so is the number of major cases. Those involved are getting increasingly bold.'
An official survey published this month reveals that between January 1993 and October 1997, there were 89,937 cases of wrongful arrest, bribery and violence by police.
On June 4 this year, a deputy county police chief in Hebei province shot dead a man after a row on the side of a road. He was executed this month.
