A myth says that China’s Triads started with a group of Buddhist monks that were martial arts experts who went to the assistance of a Qing Emperor to defeat an enemy.
Later, after defeating this enemy, the emperor decided to get rid of these monks since he saw them as a future threat.
After the assassination of hundreds, a handful survived and started the secret societies known as the “Heaven and Earth Association”.
However, the myth of the Buddhist monks is only a legend. The truth is that the Triads (organized crime in China) didn’t start from such a noble cause.
FBI Unit Chief Kingman Wong says that Chinese organized crime members identify themselves with these ancient heroes in order to glamorize their criminal activities.
According to scholars, the true story of the Triads starts during the 1700s in Fujian province along China’s southeast coast facing Taiwan.
Dian Murray, a historian at the University of Notre Dame, says that Fujian province was China’s Wild West. For protection, young men banded together in mutual aid societies. Soon, these societies turned to crime.
The “Heaven and Earth Association” took for its emblem an equilateral triangle, which explains why these gangs are called the Triads in the West.
There was no central figure or mob boss that controlled the Triad gangs, which were similar to America’s street gangs of today.
Then in 1787, the Qing Emperor discovered the existence of these gangs and declared war.
However, to survive, the Triads in Fujian province spread to every corner of the Qing Empire, to Southeast Asia and America’s China towns where they sold drugs and dealt in prostitution and gambling.
In time, one gang, known as the Green Gang, controlled the opium trade and Shanghai in the early 1900s. The Green Gang was involved in every criminal activity.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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A discussion at the China Law Blog launched my investigation of crime and corruption in China. This post is one of several on this topic as a response to a few stereotypical comments at the China Law Blog discussion such as:
amp 5 said, “I’ve also asked my Chinese friends about this and the answer I usually get is along the lines of ‘The CCP is our version of the mafia’.”
Sun Kim said, “Ragtag groups that undoubtedly operate with the unspoken approval of the provincial government and/or the CCP as they ultimately help support the economy, albeit in shady terms.”
Rui Ramosu said, “The difference being, as someone above quite cogently noted, is that the government is ultimately able to control the organized crime, but turns a blind eye to it as long as it stays under control.”
James G said, “And China hasn’t really done a good job of eliminating organized crime. They have done a superb job or hiding it from foreigners, though.”
In fact, these comments are all wrong and are perfect examples of ignorant people parroting the Sinophobia and fear of Communism that exists in America and other Western nations.
Soon after 1949 until 1982, China was drug free and had to deal with few of the crimes that have plagued America and other nations for centuries.
It wasn’t until China opened its doors to world trade in the early 1980s that organized crime and corruption returned to China on a large scale.
Thirty years later, China’s growing legal system and police now deal with prostitution, gambling, drugs and all the rest just as the US and other nations in the free world have done for centuries.
In the last decade since my first trip to China, I’ve discovered that greedy individuals and groups in the smaller cities and remote provinces conduct most of the serious crime in China.
Since the Communist Party has more than 70 million members, it makes sense that some will be involved in illegal activities and thousands have already been convicted and dealt with.
China’s infant legal system was first launched in the early 1980s in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou (Canton) and other major cities. From that start, the legal system has slowly spread to the remote areas of China.
One step toward developing a modern police and legal system happened in 1984 when China became a member of Interpol, and Mr. Zhu En Tao, a member of the Communist Party of China, was appointed Deputy Director of the China Centre, Interpol.
Here are a few examples that show what China is doing to combat crime and corruption in China and internationally.
China has executed 72 people over the past week for drug trafficking offences…. Source: Independent.co.uk, June 2000
In 1994, New York resident Nguyen Hao Duc allegedly planned in cold blood, then carried out the murder of two innocent young men as part of a narcotics conspiracy. He then fled, settling eventually in the Pearl Delta area of Guangdong Province and supported by associates in the United States who sent him monthly living expenses.…
Based on information provided by the FBI to the Chinese officials, Nguyen was located…. In short order, officers of Guangdong’s Public Security Bureau arrested him in the town of Jiangmen, predicated on a Foreign Police Cooperation request made by the FBI Legal Attaché stationed in Beijing.
Then, on July 20, 2003, officers of the Ministry of Public Security transferred custody of Nguyen to two FBI Agents and a New York Police Detective, and Nguyen returned this month to the United States to face trial. Source: FBI.gov, July 2003
China has been active in seeking international cooperation in the fight against corruption. Since 1998, Chinese prosecutors have captured a total of about 70 criminal corruption suspects from abroad through legal assistance channels with foreign countries… Chinese police have also seized more than 230 Chinese criminal suspects from more than 30 countries and regions during the 1993 to January 2005 period with the help of Interpol, the international police body. Source: Asia Times, Oct. 29, 2005
China’s anti-drug efforts in the past year resulted in the cracking of several key transnational drug trafficking cases and the planting of opium replacement crops in the “Golden Triangle” areas, China’s police said. Source: People’s Daily, November 22, 2006
Almost 800 illegal gambling dens in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand were raided in one of Interpol’s biggest co-ordinated crackdowns. Cars, bank cards, computers and mobile phones were also confiscated. The dens handled more than $150m in bets, Interpol said. Source: Guardian.co.uk, July 2010
Between 2001 and 2005, Chinese police opened more than 28,000 trafficking cases, the Chinese government arrested more than 25,000 suspected traffickers, and rescued more than 35,000 victims. During 2006, China police investigated 3,371 trafficking cases; provincial governments rescued 371 victims and arrested 415 traffickers. China also cooperated with Vietnamese, Thai and Burmese authorities to rescue victims.Source:Human Trafficking.org
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
The History Channel produced a documentary on organized Crime in China. For two thousand years, secret societies have been part of Chinese culture.
Most of these secret societies were harmless but a few were highly organized criminal organizations. Under emperors and Communists, in war and peace, Chinese crime lords have acted as shadow governments with their own laws and severe forms of punishment.
In recent decades, Chinese gangs have moved into major American cities. Today, they deal in more than gambling and drugs. They deal in human trafficking.
This segment of the History Channel documentary starts by showing a cargo container in Hong Kong being used to smuggle Chinese citizens into the US.
Over the last two decades, the business of smuggling people into the US by Chinese organized crime has boomed.
Many poor Chinese want to start a new life in the United States, which is known as Gold Mountain.
However, the risks are big and costly. Each person may have to pay as much as 40 thousand dollars to the smugglers often ending in a form of slavery in America until the debt is paid.
Kingman Wong of the FBI says these smugglers are like the flu because they are always mutating their methods and alliances to find new ways to smuggle illegal aliens in to the US. There are hundreds of independent groups operating like this around the globe.
However, the beginnings of all this illegal activity may be traced to one group from the past — the Triads. The first such group was known as the “Heaven and Earth Association” and may have started in 1761 AD.
See the first post on this Blog about Organized Crime in China
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
The questions were: “So what is going on out there? How big is China’s mafia? Does it steer clear of foreign companies, particularly those from the West? Is it big in Chongqing, yet far less so elsewhere? What do you know? Let’s get a discussion going….”
To offer more information, the five video clips embedded in this post are about organized crime in today’s China.
When I arrived at the China Law Blog, there were twenty-one comments. A few said the Communist Party was the most powerful mob in China.
I don’t agree.
However, to be fair, that would fit most governments, which is the reason why America’s wise Founding Fathers created a Republic with checks and balances in an attempt to avoid the US being taken over by organized criminals voted into office by the democratic majority.
Occasionally in the US, city or regional political machines have become organized and involved in criminal activities. Chicago and New York are the first two cities that come to mind that have had a history of political corruption linked to organized crime.
Then comes along a Bo Xilai in China or government agents such as Eliot Ness or Frank J. Wilson in the US with the support and backing of forces more powerful than the criminals.
I’m sure that the growth of organized crime in China is no different from what we’ve seen in the US, Mexico, Europe, etc., and a few of the better comments at the China Law Blog support that opinion.
I found Blue Lantern’s comment informative. “In China the organized gangs are called Triads, and they are very strong in the North-East and South of China. They are also far stronger than the Mafia, and control much of the global drug trade.”
Several comments said most “loan sharking” in China was done by rather small and disorganized groups.
I found Sun Kim’s comment interesting. “The difference between organized crime “syndicates” in China and elsewhere is that the CCP has the power, will, and the might to crush any syndicate that it deems “inappropriate” virtually overnight. These “mafia” u describe are ragtag groups that undoubtedly operate with the unspoken approval of the provincial government and/or the CCP as they ultimately help support the economy, albeit in shady terms.”
In fact, the US Federal government has the power that Sun talks about, which is why the US mafia was crushed. All it takes is a concerted, focused effort. Macmillan published a book on this topic— Bringing Down the Mob, The War Against the America Mafia.
I found Laobaixing’s comment to be the most informative. He cited a source at Rutgers that studies this topic. “He describes a lot of mom and pop organizations working with each other, rather than some well integrated crime family.”
The opinions that most organized crime starts at the city and provincial level is the best answer. That’s how organized crime started in the US. However, I do not doubt that the Chinese Triads have returned to mainland China since Deng Xiaoping opened China to world trade.
Wherever there is a capitalist economy and a democracy, there will be fertile ground for organized crime to take root.
If you are interested in this discussion, I recommend you click over to the China Law Blog and read the rest of the comments. I also plan to launch a series of posts on organized crime in China soon.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
A friend sent me two e-mails about hit & run killings in China.
ChinaSMACK said a foreigner driving drunk and without a license, hit a 23-year old Yiwu girl crossing a street in a crosswalk.
If you believe the Chinese media is completely controlled and censored, you may be surprised to learn that ChinaSMACK is a daily-updated collection of translated Internet content from the Chinese-language Internet.
ChinaSMACK covers stories, pictures, videos, and topics that have become very popular and have spread across China’s major BBS forums, social networking websites, or through forwarded e-mails sent between normal Chinese people every day.
Since starting in July 2008, ChinaSMACK now attracts over 930,000 visits and over 2,300,000 page views each month featuring a vibrant community of commenters.
ChinaSMACK did not identify the foreigner (laowai), who was driving drunk without a license. The victim was thrown over 20 meters (more than 65 feet), and she died in the hospital.
The laowai sped away from the scene to avoid being caught, but the Chinese police tracked him down and arrested him.
The victim’s family is poor and her father died three years ago.
The first two comments to the ChinaSMACK post said, “If you had hit a person, you too would be arrested and administratively detained first and then what should be done will be done. Laowai cannot escape Chinese legal punishment.”
“Our country’s criminal law does not put foreigners outside of our country’s criminal law. As long as the foreigner does something that matches a crime in our country’s criminal law, then the foreigner cannot escape the criminal laws punishment.”
This news clip talks about drunk driving and hit-and-run accidents in China
The next story is about the killing of a 20-year-old college girl in another hit-and-run. When confronted, it was reported that the drunk driver yelled, “My father is Li Gang!”
Li Gang is a high-ranking police officer and a member of the Communist Party. The victim was the daughter of a 49-year-old peasant from rural China.
The father of the victim said in an interview, “I’m just a peasant. If it is unfair, let it be.”
However, an angry Chinese public on the Internet overruled the victim’s father and refused to “let it be.” Although there have been many hit-and-run accidents in Hubei province, there was anger at China’s powerful elite and the arrogance of some children of money and power.
Arab News and the Washington Post both reported that the fathers met and Li Gang offered compensation to the victim’s father. The other choice was to have a trial, which may result in a death sentence for Li Gang’s son.
Now that the hit-and-run by Li Gang’s son is international news and all over the Internet in China, there are people in the Communist Party with more power than Li Gang that may want to see justice done. I am thinking of people such as Bo Xilai, a member of China’s Central Committee, and a man famous and popular for cracking down on crime.
However, the rich, powerful and famous often escape punishment for horrible crimes. For an example, I offer you Senator Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick incident of alleged drunk driving that caused the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.
Then there is a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle about Dominick Dunne and his 22 year old daughter that was murdered by her estranged boyfriend.
“When I attended the trial of the man who killed my daughter, what I saw was appalling,” said Dunne. “I realized that the rights of the defendant on trial exceeded the rights of the victim who had been killed…”
If you want to learn more about the rich, powerful and famous escaping punishment for horrible crimes, read about Claus von Bulow or William Kennedy Smith.
Is there a difference between China and America when it comes to justice for the rich and powerful?
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
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