Shenzhen's biggest ever clean-up campaign of rented apartments and houses was formally launched Tuesday to regulate the market and restore social order.

As part of the Action Combing, a general survey of property owners and tenants will be conducted from Aug. 1 to Oct. 31 with joint efforts of the stabilization and renovation office, public security bureau, personnel bureau, State land resources and real-estate management bureau, taxation bureau, urban management bureau and other departments. The survey will collect information on rented apartments and houses and tenants.

Measures of overall management and improvement will be implemented later this year.

Mayor Li Hongzhong and Vice Secretary of the Municipal Committee of the CPC Zhuang Lixiang attended the launch and delivered motivational speeches.

During the campaign, the city will for the first time use electronic data and an internal network connecting municipal bureaus to manage data of all rented apartments and tenants. A 7,000-strong task force will be mobilized to conduct a door-to-door survey.

This four-month tidy-up campaign is mainly targeted at reducing hidden fire hazards, crime rates and rental tax evasion in the city's two million rented apartments.

Zhuang Lixiang said the city's floating population reached 10 million in 2004, exerting huge pressure on social order management.

He said statistics from the public security bureau indicated that more than 95 percent of the city's criminal activities were committed by the floating population. Given that most of the floating population were living in rented apartments, it was not surprising to find that more than 30 percent of criminal activities involved rented apartments. The figure showed an urgent need for the city to take action.

Bao'an District recorded 337 criminal cases in rented apartments in June.

(Shenzhen Daily July 14, 2004)