Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream has a dark side exemplified by the emergence of villages specialising in a single type of crime from 'hand-cutting' pickpockets to 'cake-uncles' specialising in accounting fraud. Officially China boasts one of the lowest murder rates in the world, claiming a 43% drop in severe violent crime over the past five years. But Børge Bakken, a specialist in Chinese criminology, argues that all Chinese crime statistics are falsified for political, propaganda and administrative reasons. With the authorities focussing on clamping down on civil society and seemingly turning a blind eye to criminality, is China becoming an ‘uncivil society’?

Image: A person standing on a dark street, under a street lamp, but their features obscured, c/- Lacie Slezak on Unsplash.

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