SHENZHEN: Chinese police and the FBI have collaborated to bust two gangs in Shanghai and Shenzhen and seized pirated software worth half a billion dollars, officials said yesterday.

The gangs were pirating Microsoft and Norton software for sale in the United States, said Gao Feng, deputy director of the economic crime investigation department of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS).

Police raided the gangs from July 6 to 16 in an operation codenamed "Summer Solstice", which is claimed to be the biggest and most successful joint crackdown on software piracy.