Top court orders crackdown on gang crimes in rural areas

BEIJING - China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) has urged courts nationwide to enhance their efforts to crack down on gang crimes in rural areas to better serve the country's rural vitalization strategy, saying in a guideline that perpetrators in such cases should be handled more harshly and quickly.

The guideline, issued this week, mainly targets mafia-like gangs who manipulate the operation of village affairs, maneuver or disrupt elections at the grassroots level, monopolize village resources, misappropriate village collective assets and who use clan force and family power to play the bully in the village.

Those running business operations related to prostitution, gambling, drugs as well as usury will also be harshly cracked down upon, it said.

The SPC also demanded that cases related to land contracting and land use rights disputes should be properly coped with.