Is it safe ?
‘Is it a safe neighborhood?’ might seem like an obvious first question while house-hunting in America of Europe, but it isn’t a question you really need to ask in China. Of course, not all cities are equally safe – boom cities like Shenzen and Guangzhou have a reputation for being less safe than other places – but crime statistics in China are impressively low.
According to a Shanghai Daily article that ran on May 17, 2006, China had 31,000 homicides, of which more than 20,000 were murders, and 554,000 cases of seriously violent crimes in 2005. By way of comparison, there are something in the neighborhood of 16,000 murders and 1.3 million violent crimes in the US every year.
If we take these numbers at face value, and do a bit of math to adjust for the marked differences in population, murders happen only ¼ as often in China and violent crime only 1/16th as often.
In reality, we can’t take the numbers at face value. China’s Ministry of Public Security, which compiles and reports crime statistics, doesn’t define what constitutes a “seriously violent crime,” and without that definition we’ve no way of knowing how violent crime in China really compares to violent crime in America. Too, what constitutes a murder may not be the same under the Chinese legal system as it is under the American one. Grains of salt aside though, the numbers do illustrate something expats already know: China’s cities are safe places to live.
However, safe though you may be walking along the streets of a Chinese city alone at 3 AM, your belongings are another matter entirely. Though you hardly ever hear of people being attacked in dark alleys, mugging and thieving stories are common, from the taxi driver who gave a friend fake bills in change, to the one who drove off with a friend’s laptop, to the friend who had her purse yanked right off her shoulder. You shouldn’t bother buying an expensive bike, because it will only get stolen; you shouldn’t put your wallet in your back pocket because someone with quick fingers will lift it; you should buy a purse that zips rather than snaps closed, because it’s harder for a thief to grab your cell-phone out of it – these are all well-known facts in China. In short, you need to watch your stuff more than you need to watch out for yourself.
