China is sending more policemen to its rural regions following a government call to build a peaceful countryside, a senior police officer said here Monday.

More than 30,000 police stations have been built in rural regions as the government streamlines its larger police stations and redeploys more police officers to "frontier grass roots" rural regions, said Public Security Vice-Minister Liu Jinguo.

Police have been researching the public security situation in villages, safeguarding social order and taking preventive measures against possible security incidents, he said at a meeting of the Central Committee for Comprehensive Management of Public Security.

The Ministry of Public Security claimed that 17,900 incidents involving mass participation were handled nationwide in the first nine months of the year, down 22.1 percent from the same period last year.

The Chinese government has been promoting a campaign to build a harmonious society and trying to transform its vast rural regions into new socialist countryside that features sound social order.

"It's overall stable in terms of public security in the rural areas", he said, though he warned China's fast urbanization poses public security concerns in areas bordering urban and rural regions and in relatively developed countryside.

During the first nine months this year, 385,000 farmers were involved in "mass incidents" and 8,031 murders reported in rural regions.

Liu also noted the fall of 1.2 percent in the number of criminal cases to 3.34 million across the country during the same period.

He required local police forces to conduct research on factors affecting stability in the countryside, take proper measures to ward off violent crimes and mass incidents.

Mass incidents, if happened, should be properly handled for fear of intensifying social contradictions, he said.