More than 1,300 criminal gangs have been smashed by Chinese police in the latest campaign against organized crime.

By the end of October police had referred 196 cases of alleged organized crime for prosecution and 1,347 crime gangs had been broken according to the office for the national campaign against organized crime.

In China organized crime gangs are often protected by public officials and state staff through bribery, threats or other means. 

Prosecutors had been exposing the "umbrellas" covering gangs with 33 cases uncovered involving 47 state workers, said Huang Hailong, deputy director of the investigation and supervision department of the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

Meanwhile police put 3.75 million criminal cases on file for investigation in the first ten months of this year. This is 41,000 fewer, or 1.1 percent down, from the same period last year and the number of cases resolved increased by 113,000 to 2.21 million, the office said.

"In general public security has been relatively stable this year," a spokesman from the office said.

(Xinhua News Agency November 24, 2006)