In a recent survey, 99 per cent of residents in Tianjin...

In a recent survey, 99 per cent of residents in Tianjin felt that law and order in this coastal city has greatly improved since the 'Strike Hard' campaign - the third in the past two decades - began in April. Tens of thousands of wanted criminals have been netted in the on-going 'Strike Hard' campaign.
The previous two, conducted in 1983 and 1996, also saw China's police force, prosecutors and the courts working closely in operations that promised 'quick arrest, quick trial and quick result'.
This time round, one such operation in the south-western city of Chongqing, dubbed 'Hurricane No 3', saw 3,600 people apprehended in one night and over 500 criminal cases cracked and 11 triads busted in September.
Although such coordinated efforts are believed to be a good way to check the spread of crimes, legal and political scholars said it would compromise the judicial process in the long term.
Professor Chen Weidong of the Law School of China's People University, told The Straits Times that such a movement provides only an expedient solution, but it is not in line with legal justice and should be avoided.
'In some places, the local officials would go to the extremes to achieve quotas set by the authorities,' he explained.
As well, Prof Chen said, 'public arrests' rallies, which are common during the 'Strike Hard' campaigns to shame those being picked up in front of masses, constitute a violation of criminal procedure as many were only suspects.
Instead of relying on such campaigns, Prof Chen said the authorities should raise the awareness of law among the people through education.
The suspects should not be treated as if they were convicts and should not be put through such shameful public shows, he added.
Dr Zheng Yongnian, political analyst at the East Asia Institute of the National University of Singapore, stressed that 'a clean and efficient government is crucial for building an effective law enforcement mechanism'.
He warned that unscrupulous officials could exploit the loopholes and use the campaigns to get rid of their political rivals.
People arrested during the campaign are also likely to get a much severe and probably unjust penalty than in normal times.
The number of death sentences meted out during such campaigns is believed to be high too, although the government remains tight-lipped about the actual figure.
Western media and human rights group, however, have been keeping tabs. The New York Times reported that at least 3,000 have been put to death this year, and double or even triple that number are being put on the death row.
Rights group Amnesty International also claimed that China executed more people in 2001 than the rest of the world in the past three years.