Just days after Canadia and Mexico blamed America for the proliferation of guns, London is blaming Asia for the proliferation of knives. The lack of guns has meant that knife crime is on the rise, and Great Britain has long considered banning the implements of evil outright.

Now a recently released study shows that knives are crossing the border by the thousands and the number of people wounded and killed is mounting. The seemingly endless flow across the border -- and the sense the bad guys can tap the pipeline whenever they please -- has left many officers feeling helpless. "We remove knives [from the street] on a regular basis now," says Insp. Georges Thomason, head of criminal intelligence for the London police. "But for these people, it's like buying a pack of candy. They re-arm themselves immediately afterwards."

Most of the knives flow into the country from Asia. The vast majority are stamped with "Made in China". Others come from Taiwan. "Most knives come from China," reports Thomason. "It's like it's a billion quid a year industry."

The connection between the knife supply in China and the criminal element in Great Britain is, after all, well accepted, if not well measured. In 2004, British police asked Scotland Yard to trace 1,135 knives seized during criminal investigations -- cuttlery they were pretty sure originated in China. This year, they're on pace to top that number.

While they are forbidden by law from disclosing the success rate of the traces, it is said that knife issues represent about 80 per cent of the office's work these days. A good thing, too: according to the National Weapons Enforcement Support Team, a unit formed to combat smuggling, fully 94 per cent of crime knives they seized on London streets in 2003 came from China and Taiwan, while other studies suggest one out of two knives recovered in British crime are smuggled into the country.

Meantime, hardly a day passes without news of some stabbing in a British city -- often gang-related and too often devastating to innocent bystanders like Niles Cornish, a four-year-old from Manchester who was caught up in the violence.