"They were young kids, from outside Shenzhen, who'd had nothing to eat. I was in the army for five years, so I know how to defend myself, and I quickly overpowered the guy with the knife," said 40-year-old Yang.

"I gave them 10 yuan (1.5 dollars) so they could buy two bowls of noodles and told them not to try and rob people again. I hope this taught them a lesson."

The recent incident is an example of what experts fear could become a crime wave as China's 1.3 billion people struggle with the consequences of the global meltdown.

The export-dependent Chinese economy slowed to 6.8 percent growth in the final quarter of last year, a decidedly worrying pace for a nation used to double-digit expansion, and unemployment figures have risen sharply.

Factories have closed down by the thousands along China's east coast, costing the jobs of 20 million workers from the destitute rural interior who had found new hope in the cities.

With the economy unlikely to pick up soon and re-create those lost jobs, the social impact could worsen, warned Liu Kaiming, director of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, an organisation that educates and advises migrants.

"People can only live without work for a month or so before they have to start thinking of a way out," Liu said, from his Shenzhen office.

The concern that the migrant workers will now turn to crime is felt all over China, but nowhere perhaps as keenly as in Shenzhen, part of Guangdong province, the nation's main industrial hub and labour magnet.

"The public security situation will remain rather serious this year, and there will be an increase in various forms of crime," said He Guangping, the deputy head of police in Guangdong, said last week.

"The financial crisis may create unemployment among migrant workers, and the unemployed may come under the influence of criminals and become a destabilising element, or they could turn into criminals themselves."

In Shenzhen, a city of four million people where large industrial zones are gradually filling up with idle hands as more plants stop operating, many residents readily tell of incidents when they or someone they know was a victim of crime.

"One of my friends, a woman from Brunei, called me the other day, and she was very upset. A pickpocket had stolen 4,000 yuan (580 dollars) from her," said John Xiang, a tour guide.

But Xiang, who is himself a migrant from central China's Hubei province, explained crime was not just a problem in the big cities.

"It's really bad in the countryside. Burglars have broken into my parents' home twice," he said.

In places such as Shenzhen the main response to the crime threat is a highly visible police presence.

"Crime is under control, at least in the centre of the city. Shenzhen has the second-most police officers in China after Beijing," said Liu Jianxin, a policeman patrolling near Shenzhen's train station.

"But out in the suburbs, in the industrial zones, crime is worse. That's because of the large number of migrants there."

However strong the feeling is, there are no statistics showing what percentage of crime is committed by migrants and locals tend to blame crime on outsiders.

But for academics in China, it is fairly uncontroversial to link a weakened economy and a rise in crime rates.

"It's beyond doubt that crime is rising as a result of the crisis," said Du Xiongbo, a professor of criminal psychology at Xiangtan University in central China's Hunan province.

"After the Asian financial crisis in 1997, crime rates also went up," he said.

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