Source: Crime Stats: compare key data on China & United States (DISCLAIMER: This data seems fairly outdated...the sources appear to range from 2002 to 2011; China has changed enormously since then... if someone has more up to date info feel free to share)

More up to date reports:

"China is one of the countries with the lowest rates of homicide, criminal offenses, and gun-related incidents globally, as the public security situation has remained stable and improved over the past five years, according to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) on Monday.

In 2023, the total number of criminal cases filed by public security organs nationwide decreased 12.9 percent, and the number of public security cases handled decreased 9.7 percent, compared with 2019. Among them, the number of serious violent criminal cases such as explosions and murders decreased 10.7 percent. The homicide rate in China was 0.46 per 100,000 people, said Li Guozhong, a MPS spokesperson, at a press briefing."

Source: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202405/1313108.shtml

"The number of people charged with serious violent crimes plummeted to 61,000 in 2023 from 162,000 in 1999, the report said, noting that 9,171 people were prosecuted for offenses related to guns or explosions last year, down 11.09 percent compared with 2022.

At the same time, the percentage of offenders sentenced to three years or less in prison for minor crimes among the total number of offenders rose from 54.4 percent in 1999 to 82.3 percent in 2023, the report said. In China, a prison term of three years or less, is generally considered misdemeanor."

[...]

In addition, China intensified its fight against crime in the fields of finance, intellectual property and internet last year, endeavoring to maintain financial stability, optimize the business environment and purge the cyberspace of malpractices.

According to the report, more than 185,000 people were prosecuted for financial crimes in the past five years, up 28.2 percent compared with the previous five years. The number of intellectual property cases concluded by Chinese courts in 2023 was about 490,000, up 1.8 percent year-on-year, it said."

Source: https://epaper.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202405/21/WS664bd965a310df4030f51aa4.html

Anecdotally, most people who travel to China say it's one of the safest countries in the world, in particular very safe for women (or anyone really) to walk alone at night without fear in any major city as well as on public transportation.

The greatest dangers for tourists appear to be: a) silent electric vehicles, especially electric scooters which people from other countries who are used to hearing loud engines may not notice and step in front of accidentally, and b) getting scammed by taxi drivers and/or overpriced shops in very touristy areas.

All in all China is much safer than the US. And this with an incarceration rate five times lower than that of the US (China: 120 per 100k in 2017, USA: 540 per 100k in 2024, down from 650 in 2019), which means a lower total number of prisoners despite having over four times the population, and likely with much shorter sentences on average.

And finally, here's a funny stat re: "China" vs US crime

(A reminder that correlation does not equal causation. This is just an amusing coincidence.)

[–] Magicicad@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That’s crazy. It’s almost like poverty alleviation is far more successful than thinly veiled 21st century Jim Crow

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yep. The main thing to remember here is that this wasn't always this way. China used to be much more dangerous in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. The huge improvement in material conditions came with a very noticeable reduction in crime. It wasn't simply a matter of better policing or surveillance. Even anti-corruption efforts could not have succeeded without the material basis improving across the whole of society. This is like a perfect case study that confirms what leftists have always been saying, which is that you don't solve crime with punitive draconian measures, but by lifting people up out of the conditions that create crime. That and having a society that is less focused on the individual and more on social "harmony" as the Chinese would say.

[–] cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I've read that even as late as the 1990's, that many areas in rural (and even in some suburban and urban places, just less often) China were de-facto ruled by warlords, bandits, thieves and gangs that held the local populace under their boot by the neck, and that the Chinese government, police and military were more like an invading army or militia, than the actual government that they were supposed to be.

I'm extremely glad, that era seems to be almost entirely over, now.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah, there are some wild stories about that time. I don't know how representative they necessarily are of the whole of China, i think maybe most places the problems weren't that extreme, but certainly there were problems.

A lot of that was also undoubtedly due to the social chaos unleashed by Reform and Opening Up. The benefits of that policy have been discussed at length but one of the major downsides was the breakdown of the Mao era communitarianism and a beginning of an almost every man for himself social anarchy as the economic safety nets (the abolition of the Iron Rice Bowl for example was a severe blow) people relied on were no longer there.

That chaos has been greatly reigned in over the last 30 years as material conditions, infrastructure, administration, etc. have improved and the very extreme wealth disparity of the first decades of market experimentation was leveled out by poverty alleviation.

[–] cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I think that many communists unfortunately (not purposefully or maliciously, though) gloss over or forget how fucking terrible and "evil" and grotesque and risky alot of aspects of the Reform and Opening Up process were.

I used to hate and demonize Deng Xiaoping, and I feel incredibly guilty for that, even though he has been dead for a long time. This is back when I was a relatively new communist and bought into alot of the CIA propaganda about China.

Yet, it bears consideration just how close the Reform and Opening up strategy came to mismanagement and possible failure, at times.

I can only imagine how horrible it was for Chinese peasant's entire Iron Rice Bowl structure to have been dismantled virtually overnight, and have almost no finances, social safety net, greatly stripped labor protections and rights. And there are still alot of unfortunate layovers and side effects from the Reform and Opening up policy that still haven't been ironed out. Like the fact that despite state and socialist-minded support, the overall Healthcare system still fundamentally operates on a profit motive, just wayyyy less exploitative and expensive and price-gouging as in capitalist countries. Or how even though absolute poverty has been eradicated, there are still lots of poor people, higher education can still be very expensive, labor protections could be better in general.

I'm not sure how true this is, but I've read/heard that in regards to poor people, that in some contexts, there are more poorer people in China now than during the Mao era, albeit less people overall in absolute/heart-wrenching poverty. Though it also seems like it is easier for poorer people to better their standard of living.

I'm extremely glad that things are definitely on the up and up, though. And I truly think that China's best times haven't even started yet.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I fully agree about the often overlooked and very serious downsides of the policies adopted in the 80s and 90s. If the Cultural Revolution swung too far to the left, Reform and Opening Up definitely swung too far to the right in many respects. Luckily under Xi Jinping (and partly his predecessor) they realized this and made much needed corrections.

I don't agree that there were less poor people in Mao's China. I think we should be careful not to idealize that period too much either. Yes a lot of progress was achieved during that time but there was still an enormous amount of poverty. What there was much less of was inequality.

But i think we can safely say that in objective terms the material conditions are much improved today, across the board.

[–] cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

By Xi Jinping's predecessor, who do you mean exactly? Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin, Zhou Enlai? I know that Jintao was Xi's immediate predecessor, but I think it can be argued that it was more of a team effort that paid the way for Xi Jinping.

I'm not saying that you aren't saying it wasn't a team effort, I just mean specifically in this context.

I agree that idealizing the Maoist era isn't a good or helpful thing, and there were a lot of problems. And as I said, I don't know if there are actually more poorer people in modern China than during the Mao era, but I find it incredibly hard to believe that the modern era isn't the best of China's history, and I figure that for over 80 percent of the countries' population, their living standards are at their highest point in all of history.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 hour ago

Maybe i shouldn't have made that offhand comment about his predecessor because now i risk exposing a gap in my knowledge, haha...

What i meant was, as far as i know, and i admit my knowledge on this subject is not the best, but i've heard that the turn toward addressing the most glaring problems such as corruption and inequality that were caused by the economic reforms in fact began already in the later part of Hu Jintao's term. I just wanted to make it clear that it is not solely a Xi Jinping achievement, it was clearly something that the CPC as a whole understood needed to happen.

[–] marl_karx@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

why is is going down almost everywhere elso in fhe world too? because ppl dont leave their house anymore?

[–] Xiisadaddy@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 3 days ago (2 children)

lead poisoning. I know its a meme but exposure to lead does increase the likelihood youll do crimes and they took it out of the gasoline and ever since the crime rates are going down. As the people who were exposed to it via car exhaust are slowly getting old, and dying. Old people do less crime, and dead people dont do any crime at all.

[–] ghost_of_faso3@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Lead might have something to do with it, I would personally suggest its better tied to the economy of China though, the 90s where a shit time marked by a large economic crisis in China due to the fall of the USSR; the reduction in crime is imo, more down to the stabilizing force that Deng and Xi had post-USSR.

[–] Xiisadaddy@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 day ago

in china yes. but it happened globally too and other places didnt have the based leaders of china.

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

and dead people dont do any crime at all.

A perfect alibi 🤔