Kunming, anyway, is safer vis-a-vis violent crimes than almost anywhere I've ever lived in US, Europe, Asia - my experience.

In my experience, Kunming, at any rate, is safer vis-a-vis violent crime than anyplace I've lived in the US, Europe or Asia.

@alien
With a population of 4-5x that of the USA - why (in your opinion) is Kunming safer than the places you've lived in the USA, EU, or Asia?

what popn got to do with it/?

Why has population been brought into it. If anything that statistic can only work against you.

China has more people than America and less crime (a fact).

There we go. End of.
That's why its safer.

Europe is a safe place but China is safer (it's my opinion)

Anyone who's going to take the point of view that China is more dangerous that America or Europe is going to have a hard time trying to justify that point. I doubt there's any hard facts out there in that favour.

As for saying what about traffic crime? Well I don't know about you but I would prefer someone to undertake me on the motorway or park on double yellow lines over having someone high on drugs eat my face off or have a 10 year old come to school with an AK-47 and kill everyone.

Population is the thoughtless answer to many issues. For example: Why are class sizes so large? 'Because China is a big country with many people'. When you mention, that in which case, there are enough adults from which to recruit and train more teachers, you get a blank stare as the respondent tries to figure it out.

I'd be pretty sure China has a high death rate due to traffic crime, maybe I'm wrong though as have no stats, no doubt someone knows.

@laotou: I don't know the answer to your question - my statement is based on my personal impressions and experience. Like others, I don't see how population has anything to do with it - anyway, Kunming does not have a population 4 or 5 times that of the USA. If Chinese overall violent crime were 4 to 5 times that of the US, then they would be equal in terms of the crime rate.

Ref road deaths: True. But I tend to think of traffic accidents rather than traffic 'crime'. Although I suppose a lot of the accidents are the result of criminally dangerous driving.

good point nnoble, China has more adults than kids, they just need to hire more teachers. I'm sure there would be takers - its a stable ish job and quite well respected, and though not highly paid officially, the hong baos must add up. If they say they don't have enough money, I would point them in the direction of the many HUGELY expensive infrastructure projects they are doing. Cancel just one, and that will pay for the extra teachers. There's no better investment than children's education.