China's serious crime rate was down in the first half of the year, the Ministry of Public Security announced on Tuesday.

Bomb attacks were down 27.2 percent, murders down 9.1 percent and arson down 7.9 percent, said Wu Heping, spokesman of the ministry, at a press conference, without giving the numbers for the crimes.

Cases of theft remained static at 1.45 million.

Wu said 46,000 cases related to drugs and gambling were recorded, down 8.9 percent.

The country's police authorities investigated more than two million crimes in the first half, of which about 920,000 were solved, up 7.7 percent.

Nearly 88 percent of homicide cases were solved, up 3.3 percentage points from the same period last year, Wu said, adding more than half of all cities and counties solved all homicide cases, and another 25 percent of cities and counties had no cases relating to murders or manslaughters.

"The dropping crime rate and increased solution rate, even only a few percentage points, are all thanks to local police efforts," he said.

The number of robberies was down 9.6 percent to 139,000, with car thefts decreasing by 26 percent to 9,073, the ministry statistics show.

However, the number of economic crimes in China increased by ten percent to 36,000 during the first half of 2007, warned Wu.

The spokesman also announced that more than 390,000 bicycle thefts were solved from January to July, with 134,000 suspects involved and more than 8,000 gangs broken up, thanks to an increase of 100,000 bicycle guards and the establishment of regulated bike trade fairs to cut illegal trading channels.

The ministry reported 95,000 fire accidents in the first half, down 32 percent, with 898 deaths and 488 injured people, and causing about 468 million yuan (US$61.6 million) in damages.

(Xinhua News Agency August 15, 2007)