The illegal production, possession and trade of explosives and firearms is declining, the Ministry of Public Security announced yesterday.

Compared with the same period of last year, the number of criminal cases involving explosives and guns dropped by 17.7 and 15.7 percent respectively from January to July. The ministry did not give exact figures.

The decline is attributed to the national crackdown on illegal possession and trade of explosives and firearms initiated on June 2, Yan Zhengbin, deputy director of the ministry's public security bureau, said at a press conference in Beijing.

As of Sunday, police had confiscated about 117,000 illegal guns, 2,445 tons of explosives, 4.81 million detonators, 3.37 million bullets and 2.62 million meters of blasting fuse since June, according to the ministry.

A total of 4,684 suspects are now being held under criminal custody, 1,794 people have been arrested and about 920 have been transferred to public prosecutors.

China's Criminal Law spells out that criminals who sell guns or explosives can receive punishments ranging from three years in jail to the death penalty.

Yan said the ministry would continue with the crackdown. "We're confident that the number of these crimes will see another sharp decrease by the year-end," he said.

Yan added that compared with remote mountainous and border areas, big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai see a very small number of crimes involving explosives and firearms.

The production, sale and stockpiling of guns and explosives has been decreasing in China since 2001, but the problem is still "severe" in some areas and causes "constant accidents," ministry spokesman Wu Heping said at the beginning of the crackdown.

Meanwhile, because China has tightened regulations on the management of explosives, some unlicensed coal mines have no way to get legal dynamite and have turned to illegal sources, which "encourages the underground production and sale of explosives," Wu said.

The crackdown has received a warm response from the public. "It's a people's war", Yan said." We've received 14,173 tips from public reports, and about 6,000 of them were very valuable."

(China Daily September 13, 2006)