Zahid: China's success in reducing crime rates can be emulated

China has been able to drastically reduce its crime rates over the last few decades, due to it investing a lot on developing sophisticated assets to boost security control.

Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said this was a major success for a country with a population of 1.3 billion in the aspects of security and public order control, which could be emulated by Malaysia.

He said China was interested to send its officers to share experience with Malaysia in tackling terrorism issues, especially in the area of rehabilitation because like Malaysia, that country was also facing problems related to terrorism, especially in northern Yunnan Province.

"With regard to rehabilitation, actually Malaysia too can share its experience in deradicalising detainees, which will be learned by the Chinese authorities," he told a press conference on the last day of his working visit to China, at a hotel, here, Sunday.

Ahmad Zahid said although China had its own procedure in rehabilitating detainees who were terrorists, Malaysia's approach was seen as more encompassing, covering all aspects including psychological, involving the services of counsellors as well as the ulama, through the religious approach, and so on.

He said China's success in reducing its crime rates was also due to its willingness to invest heavily in research and development (R&D), besides developing a solid system equipped with sophisticated assets to monitor every movement in areas seen as having high crime rates, or called crime hotspots.

Ahmad Zahid said with the cooperation of the private sector, assets such as high-definition closed-circuit television (HD CCTV) cameras and tracking CCTVs could be placed at several locations, while the government could give its enforcement personnel adequate training and ensuring a high level of discipline, besides increasing the manpower.

He said China also faced problems related to drug abuse, where 51 per cent of the prisoners were those who had committed drug-related offences.

The deputy prime minister said from his observation, he could sum up five main aspects that should be taken into account in reducing crime rates, namely policy, the commitment of enforcement officers, stringent law and regulations, enforcement manpower strength and increasing assets.

Asked if he would propose an increase in allocation in the next budget to boost the security assets and enforcement manpower, he said most probably but the matter needed to be discussed further before being finalised.

Ahmad Zahid said in Malaysia, the government encouraged business operators to install CCTV cameras at their premises, but most of these were still using the analogue system, and not connected to the police stations and also unable to track the criminals. -- Bernama