Chinese police have uncovered 12,900 cases of fake invoices-related crimes and confiscated 780 million fake invoices in their efforts to contain the spreading of economic crimes since 2008, the Ministry of Public Security said Wednesday.

Invoice-related crimes have seen a 20 percent increase year-on-year since 2003 in China and continue to undermine the country's taxation system as well as threatening state security, the ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, China's police have also been making greater efforts to fight crimes concerning bank cards to safeguard the country's financial order. Between January and October this year, China's police dealt with 19,000 cases of bank card-related crimes, and retrieved funds totaling 600 million yuan (about US$90 million), according to the ministry.

The ministry, along with People's Bank of China, the central bank, launched a nationwide campaign against bank card-related crimes this January.

Since then, over 1,000 dens involved in illegal credit cards have been smashed. According to statistics issued by China UnionPay, an association for the country's banking card industry, the total number of bank cards issued in China reached over 2.1 billion as of the first half of 2010.

With bank cards being widely used, China saw rampant cases of fraudulent use of bank cards, including illegal cash advances at vendor terminals and unauthorized overdrafts.

Since 2009, China's police have investigated over 100,000 cases of economic crimes in commerce and trade and retrieved funds amounting to 20 billion yuan.

(Xinhua News Agency November 25, 2010)