The History of Organized Crime in China: Part 5 of 5

May 10, 2014

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During one assassination attempt from one of his gangsters, Nicky Louie was shot in the head but managed to run to the police station to save himself.

He agreed to work with the police and the federal prosecutors.

However, to gain the government’s protection, he had to admit to his own crimes and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

This led to the end of the era of New York’s Chinatown Triads.

Today in the U.S., the Chinese Triads consist of an elusive array of constantly changing alliances among many small gangs scattered across the country.

The only bond between the gangs is the desire for making money. These Triads are involved in everything from human trafficking and gambling, to heroin smuggling.

For the first time, the Chinese American Triads are moving beyond the Chinese community and are willing to work with anyone as long as they make money.

FBI Unit Chief Kingman Wong says this makes the Triads in the U.S. a more significant threat to the safety of American citizens.

It’s not easy to define Chinese organized crime today. The Triads are difficult to penetrate.

The History Channel produced a documentary on Organized Crime in China. (click the previous link to see the entire video—about an hour)

Return to Part 4 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

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China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

2 Comments | America, China, Chinese history, Chinese men, crime, United States | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The History of Organized Crime in China: Part 3 of 5

May 8, 2014

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At the center of the Green Gang’s metamorphosis was one man. His name was Du Yue-sheng. Du grew up an orphan and illiterate near Shanghai.

When Du was fourteen, he arrived in Shanghai and spent the money he earned on opium and women. In 1910, Du was sworn into the Green Gang.

Du lived and worked out of the French Concession in Shanghai where the police were the criminals.

In 1924, Du had an opportunity to become the leader of the Green Gang when the current leader, Wong, had the son of a powerful warlord beaten. The warlord then had Wong arrested and tossed in prison.

Du paid the warlord to free Wong, who then owed Du a debt of gratitude. From that day on, Du controlled the Green Gang.


Du Yue-sheng, godfather of the underworld—45 minute documentary

In 1927, General Chiang Kai-shek made a deal with the Triad Du controlled to destroy the Communists in Shanghai who were organizing labor unions.

Frederick Wakeman, a historian at the University of California-Berkeley says that Du was threatened with the possibility of a Communist victory.

Thousands of Green Gang members went after the Communists to shoot and behead as many as possible. Within hours, at least five thousand Communists had been executed.

As a reward, Chiang Kai-shek made Du a general in the Nationalist Army. Du’s public image became one of respectability while he maintained an iron control over Shanghai and the Green Gang.

For Chiang Kai-shek, the alliance with Du and the Green Gang became a useful way to raise money from Shanghai’s wealthy families.

Du was also in charge of the agency to stop the opium trade in Shanghai and he controlled the drugs seized by the Nationalists, which he would sell making a huge profit.

The History Channel produced a documentary on Organized Crime in China. (click the previous link to see the entire video—about an hour)

Continued in Part 4 on May 9, 2014 or return to Part 2

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_______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The History of Organized Crime in China: Part 2 of 5

May 7, 2014

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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 of monks, 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.

The History Channel produced a documentary on Organized Crime in China. (click the previous link to see the entire video—about an hour)

Continued in Part 3 on May 8, 2014 or return to Part 1

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_______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

1 Comment | China, Chinese history, crime | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The History of Organized Crime in China — Part 1/5

November 16, 2010

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.

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1 Comment | America, China, Chinese history, Chinese police, crime, history, legal system, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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