The History of Organized Crime in China — Part 2/5

November 17, 2010

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.

Return to The History of Organized Crime in China – Part 1

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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.

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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.

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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Organized Crime

November 14, 2010

The China Law Blog had an interesting discussion about China’s Mafia…. Whaddya know?

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.

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Bo Xilai’s 32 Million

October 26, 2010

When you hear about crime and corruption in China and how horrible it is, remember the name Bo Xilai, and what he is doing to combat that image.

In 1930, mountainous Chongqing was home to about 200 thousand people.  Today, this municipality is the fastest growing urban center on the globe with an eye popping 32 million. Seven and a half million live in the metro area.

Chongqing is not one of China’s bustling coastal cities as Shanghai is. It sits almost 900 miles inland west of Shanghai or more than 1400 kilometers from the sea. Chongqing is the biggest inland river port on the Yangtze in western China.

During World War II, Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist retreated here to set up their provisional capital—far from the Japanese front lines.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the city became notorious for organized crime and corruption well before the Communist era.


The word “alleged” means an assertion made by a party in legal proceedings that is still to be proven.

In Chongqing, gangsters oversaw businesses involving billions of yuan and the corruption reached into the law-enforcement and justice systems.

 In 2009, city authorities under the leadership of municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai decided to do what none has accomplished before.

Foreign Policy magazine in Chicago on the Yangtze says the Chongqing Security Bureau cracked 32,771 criminal cases, arrested 31 mob bosses, sentenced six to death and gave the others long prison sentences.

Foreign Policy says that some of China’s political writers refer to Bo as an example of the “New Maoism” (I’ll write about “Maoism” in the next post).

Bo Xilai’s tough stand against crime earned him “Man of the Year” in a recent People’s Daily Internet Poll.  He is extremely popular among the working class and feared by corrupt officials and 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.

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