CRIME IN SHANGHAI.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19110, 20 September 1927, Page 9

CRIME IN SHANGHAI.

AN ALARMING OUTBREAK. (BT CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT.) (AUSTRALIAN AXD N.Z. CABLS ASSOCIATION.) SHANGHAI, September 18. An unprecedented wave of crime is sweeping Shanghai, principally in the International Settlement, where the authorities are alarmed and wondering if the world's crime centre has shifted from Chicago to Shanghai. The area of the settlement is 5500 acres, and the police total is 3533, including whites; Chinese, and Indians, in addition to hundreds of reserves and specials, yet outrageous crimes occur daily in broad daylight in the settlement's busiest thoroughfares. Street battles between police and desperadoes are becoming common and kidnappings happen under the noses of the police. The authorities blame the thousands of disbanded Northerners captured in the recent fighting around Nanking. Many had secreted arms and ammunition, which are now being used to terrorise the foreign settlements. Further blame is laid on the Provisional Court, controlled by the Chinese, which deals with cases affecting natives and foreigners without extraterritorial rights arising within the settlement.

This court refuses to impose the death penalty and otherwise deals lightly with "criminals brought to justice.

| The September record averages seven armed hold-ups a day and three armed kidnappings. Wealthy Chinese are in the majority of cases the victims, and they are murdered if the ransom is not forthcoming. In addition there are scores of unarmed hold-ups. A strange feature of tho situation is that crime outside the settlements is considerably less than within, suggesting an organised effort to reduce to tho minimum the well-known security afforded in the foreign settlements in the past. Opinion in certain circles is_ that a deliberate campaign has been instigated ,bv the Chinese authorities to create a situation that would justify a further claim to assume control of the settlement apart from tho original Nationalist programme.