Xi extends congratulations to model crime-fighters

President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, expressed his greetings and congratulations on Monday to people honored for their outstanding work in a campaign against organized crime.

Xi met them at a gathering in Beijing to celebrate the victory of the three-year campaign against organized and gang-related crimes.

The campaign, which was launched by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council in January 2018, aimed to ensure that people can live and work in peace and contentment, and sought to maintain social order and safeguard national stability.

Guo Shengkun, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, said at the gathering that the campaign had won a victory and the fight against such illegal activities should be advanced, and called for greater efforts to implement the Peaceful China initiative.

During the past three years, 3,644 mafia-type organizations were broken up, which was 1.3 times the number of similar organizations busted from 2008 to 2017. In addition, 11,675 other criminal gangs were also busted around the country and 237,000 suspects were arrested.

Yang Weidong, a law professor at the National Academy of Governance, said the special campaign had a significant impact, especially with regard to the country's governance at the grassroots level, as it protected citizens' legal rights and created a good social environment.

"Gangs and mafialike organizations threaten public order and justice and infringe on others' legitimate rights. The campaign has demonstrated the strength of the rule of law," Yang said.

Ji Naili, a professor of anti-graft studies at Zhou Enlai School of Government at Nankai University in Tianjin, said that the campaign had also tackled the dereliction of duty of some officials.

Ji said that people's confidence in the rule of law had been renewed by the campaign after it was undermined by the gangs and the corrupt officials behind them, adding that the Party and the government have also restored their authority amid the campaign.

According to Xinhua News Agency, a survey conducted bythe National Bureau of Statistics showed that 95.1 percent of interviewees in the first half of 2020 were satisfied with the results of the campaign.

Yuan Aiping, a lawyer from Hunan province and a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said: "As a citizen, I am pleased to witness the achievements of the campaign and that social order has been ensured. As a lawyer, my observation is that the three-year campaign to eliminate organized crime has been carried out based the principle of the rule of law, highlighting fairness and justice."

Yuan added that the campaign has made China a much safer place and said the crackdown should become a normal practice in order to prevent the reemergence of such criminal gangs.