The following you will not read in any China guide, you may perhaps not even find it on the Internet, but all inhabitants of ShenZhen (and acquaintances from ShangHai or BeiJing) whom I know will tell you this: This city has the highest crime rate in all of China. I’m always recommended to be most cautious right now, as this or that festive day was imminent and this usually makes the crime rate – which is already so unfortunately high – soar even higher.
I know hardly anyone who has not been robbed. In the bus suddenly the bag has gone amiss, in the subway the back pocket is slit with a knife and a wallet “removed” (lucky that the slitting of the pocket did not violate the buttocks, too!), the entire backpack was stolen during a football game, and bags hung from the shoulder torn off just so. My bag pocket, too, was once ripped on the bus, but I don’t have my wallet there, so first, I felt relief that I was not robbed, second, that the knife did not stuck anywhere else in my buttocks, which might have happened on this bumpy ride.
As much as I feel affection for China and the Chinese – I’m far from believing that the rate of crime in China was low in comparison to other countries. On the contrary, I believe that in all levels of society, from the road to schools to corporates, the government and police, it is more or less equally widespread as in all other countries of the world. I don’t arrogate a judgement on whether there is more or less crime in China than elsewhere.
Why wouldn’t there be “normal” crime to be expected in a country where many companies have forged baby food, where no one is surprised about having bought ineffective or even toxic drugs, because even the pharmacy fell prey to the criminal swindler company? In a country where corruption has become so overwhelming that even the government was forced in recent years to massively intervene and to condemn to death and execute the head of the national drug registration authority, a fellow who wrote approvals preferably depending on the level of bribery than on efficiency. Likewise, for example, the former deputy police chief of ChongQing, the largest city of China, who at the same time held a key position in organised crime.
And ever since my driver told me that there was more and more child abduction in ShenZhen, above all in front of schools and kindergartens in good locations, and that it had become a kind of industry to demand ransom, and that the parents would not like to see their children driving alone to school and prefer to pick them up afterwards
– ever since I have no reason to doubt that ShenZhen is no paradise on earth. But that I should always be very careful.
To the football pitch I never bring my normal backpack (“my office/property”) containing my laptop, external backup drives, passport, credit cards, wallet with money, but instead an older, less valuable backpack with sports stuff and drink, house keys (secondary) and magnetic front door card (secondary), no credit card and only a paper copy of my passport, just in the event that I should run into a check and would have to identify myself, which has not happened yet within five years. If I’m robbed there, I will manage and only replace my door lock for safety’s sake. On the football pitch – as opposed to one of my Chinese friends – I have not yet been robbed.
I do not know how many murders are committed in ShenZhen, compared to Hamburg, Frankfurt, London or New York, in total it seems to me that the police is always very relaxed here while it seems much more present in ShangHai, much more rigorous in Germany and very overwrought in New York. If you ever see coppers here – and they are really a very rare sight! – they are just for a chat, drive their girlfriend home or shopping on the police motorcycle (preferably with warning light, yet at least no siren) or compose a text message on their phone, presumably to that girlfriend that they have just taken home.