Chinese people felt safer last year thanks to effective police work, according to a survey released yesterday.

About 15.4 percent of the 102,448 people in 1,836 cities and counties covered by the study felt "very safe", with 40.1 percent feeling "safe" and 36.5 percent, "generally safe".

This means 92 percent of the people felt safe last year, or 0.1 percent more than 2005 and the highest percentage since the National Bureau of Statistics began the annual survey in 2001. The figures in the first two years were 81 and 84 percent, and stayed around 91 percent from 2003 to 2005.

The survey shows 48.2 percent of the respondents thought the police crackdown on crimes was "effective", a rise of 5.7 percent over 2005.

Ministry of Public Security data show that police handled 4.19 million criminal cases in the first 11 months of 2006, down 0.8 percent year on year. Violent crimes such as murders, arsons, rapes and kidnappings dropped as much as 4.3 percent.

Police smashed 1,347 criminal gangs, too, and began judicial proceedings against 296 of them.

As a result, only 26 percent of the respondents considered "criminal offence" to be the top threat to security, a sharp decrease of 5 percent over 2005. "Traffic accidents" replaced "public disorder" as the top threat last year.

Asked "which social problem do you care for most", 15 percent chose "social morality", and 14.9 percent, "medical care". Public security, education and unemployment were among their top five concerns, though.