Guangdong police broke up 88 mafia-style criminal organizations and 334 gang-related criminal organizations last year as part of a national campaign against such rings, which will help improve public security in the country's most populous province.

In the campaign, more than 53,000 people were detained on criminal grounds in the province during the year, with 8.54 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) worth of assets sealed, frozen or seized, Zhang Qinghong, deputy chief of the provincial Commission for the Political and Legal Affairs, said at a news conference on Wednesday.

A total of 7,510 people involved in 2,087 cases were prosecuted and court verdicts were passed on 2,361 people in 601 cases, Zhang said.

With the campaign, the public security situation in Guangdong continued to improve, with the sense of security among the public and business climate further lifted, he said, citing a drop in public security and criminal cases in the province.

A large mafia-style criminal gang led by a man surnamed Shi, for example, was busted by the Guangzhou police, with 78 suspects captured.

The gang was accused of running casinos, forcing trades and making usurious loans in Haizhu district. It laundered its illegal income and was tied to violent crimes, extortion and possession of guns, the authorities said.

A cross-border gang was cracked by the Shenzhen police as they investigated a kidnapping case. The gang, led by brothers from Hong Kong, surnamed Wong, was built up around a consulting company in Shenzhen and was involved in illegal business operations, lending fraud, extortion and illegal detention.

In rural areas, 33 people were captured and seven village officials were punished in connection with a gang in Dashatang village of Qingyuan.

The gang, which was organized by clan, broke the law through violence, extortion, robbery, damaging residents' houses and illegally extracting river sand, the authorities said.

More than 70 percent of the 88 mafia-style gangs taken down in the campaign were busted in rural areas of the province, said Lin Weixiong, deputy director of the provincial Department of Public Security.

Party secretaries who were found to be unqualified at loosely led grassroots Party organizations have been removed, according to Ouyang Guiyou, an official with the Organization Department of the Guangdong Committee of the Communist Party of China.

During the campaign, cases were processed involving 1,853 people who offered umbrellas of protection to gangs, 321 of whom were prosecuted, Zhang said.

Among them, Liu Xiaofeng, former head of the industrial, commercial and quality supervision office in Zhuhai's Nanping town was sentenced to 10 years in prison after his first trial. He was found to have offered protection to businesses that forced tourists to purchase merchandise, and took 180,000 yuan in bribes.

Meanwhile, more than 13 million yuan in rewards were paid to people providing tips to police about crimes during the campaign. Zhang said measures are in place to protect the safety of the tipsters.