6 replies to this topic

[calvo]

Organized crime is a well-known phenomenon in overseas Chinese communities; that engage in activities such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, illegal gambling, extorsion of Chinese businesses, and money laundering.
At different periods of history, cosmopolitan port cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong had also had strong prescence of organized gangs. From what I read; the KMT of Chiang Kai Chek had strong ties with the Shanghai criminal underworld.

I have one question: are most Chinese organized crime families traditional, family-based organizations with well-established rules such as the Italian Cosa Nostra, or are they a loose connection of independent criminal gangs with brief history and driven purely by profit, such as the Russian Mafia?

In the news, I've never heard of organized crime activities in Beijing or in any major mainland city. Does it actually exist there?

[WuXiaHer0]

At different periods of history, cosmopolitan port cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong had also had strong prescence of organized gangs. From what I read; the KMT of Chiang Kai Chek had strong ties with the Shanghai criminal underworld.

Do you know about Du Yuesheng?He was a notorious opium dealer and was involved with the KMT.I have a book about him,called "Old Shanghai:Gangsters in Paradise" by Lynn Pan.Quite interesting.

I have one question: are most Chinese organized crime families traditional, family-based organizations with well-established rules such as the Italian Cosa Nostra, or are they a loose connection of independent criminal gangs with brief history and driven purely by profit, such as the Russian Mafia?

In the news, I've never heard of organized crime activities in Beijing or in any major mainland city. Does it actually exist there?

There's one in the mainland recently.Read this news and tell me what do you think.

http://www.huffingto...e_n_343462.html

Edited by WuXiaHer0, 14 December 2009 - 12:11 PM.

[calvo]

Well, the news is typical news of the busting of any criminal organization. Drug-trafficking, prostitution, and armed robbery exist in every society; yet "organized crime" mean a lot more than that: it would often imply a "parallel government" that affects every level of mainstream society.
For example, the "Green Gang" and "Red Gang" of Shanghai in the 1930s were "Mafias" in the true sense; as is also the Cosa Nostra and the Camorra of Italy.

In general, are most Chinese organized crime groups today descended from organizations of the late Qing and early republican period; or do they have nothing to do with them?

For example, in Russia, the criminal world has traditionally been dominated by the "thieves-in-law" caste. However, since the 1990s, most Russian criminal gangs are products of the capitalization of the economy and corrupt former communist party officials, with little or nothing to do with the "old-school" criminal societies.

[WuXiaHer0]

Well, the news is typical news of the busting of any criminal organization. Drug-trafficking, prostitution, and armed robbery exist in every society; yet "organized crime" mean a lot more than that: it would often imply a "parallel government" that affects every level of mainstream society.
For example, the "Green Gang" and "Red Gang" of Shanghai in the 1930s were "Mafias" in the true sense; as is also the Cosa Nostra and the Camorra of Italy.

In general, are most Chinese organized crime groups today descended from organizations of the late Qing and early republican period; or do they have nothing to do with them?

For example, in Russia, the criminal world has traditionally been dominated by the "thieves-in-law" caste. However, since the 1990s, most Russian criminal gangs are products of the capitalization of the economy and corrupt former communist party officials, with little or nothing to do with the "old-school" criminal societies.

We don't call these criminals as mafias or gangsters anymore."Triad" is the right word.This term is used for the Chinese underground society.
Organized crimes in the 21st century become more complicated and varied than those compared to the late Qing Dynasty period like you said.

I'm not an ace in this topic.Read this.Perhaps it might answer your question.

http://en.wikipedia....ound_societies)

[bhchao]

Organized crime from Taiwan was responsible for the murder of dissident Henry Liu at his garage in San Francisco about 25 years ago. Liu wrote a derogatory book on Jiang Jingguo. Gangsters from the Bamboo Union carried out the hit. Taiwan's defense minister had connections with them and ordered them to kill Liu.

[ahxiang]

Organized crime is a well-known phenomenon in overseas Chinese communities; that engage in activities such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, illegal gambling, extorsion of Chinese businesses, and money laundering.
At different periods of history, cosmopolitan port cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong had also had strong prescence of organized gangs. From what I read; the KMT of Chiang Kai Chek had strong ties with the Shanghai criminal underworld.

I have one question: are most Chinese organized crime families traditional, family-based organizations with well-established rules such as the Italian Cosa Nostra, or are they a loose connection of independent criminal gangs with brief history and driven purely by profit, such as the Russian Mafia?

In the news, I've never heard of organized crime activities in Beijing or in any major mainland city. Does it actually exist there?

In ancient China, we had so-called "Xia Ke", i.e., knights of the Western sort. Under the Mongol and Manchu rule, we Chinese used religion as cover fo organization and rebellion. In most recent past, Manchu QIng Dynasty, we began to have the secret societies mutating into the "gangs", namely, the "tian di hui" or the Heaven and Earth Society, and the Hong-Men or the "Ming Emperor Hongwu Lineage Society", the Big Sword Society and the Small Dagger Society etc. The "Hong" soundex mutated to "hong" for red, the same pronunciation, and hence the Red Gang. Manchu rulers played a trick to sow dissension among the secret society, and hence the split into the Green Gang and Red Gang etc. While Sun Yat-sen used Japanese and the secret societies for rebellion, Song Jiaoren and Zhang Taiyan et al penetrated into the Manchu New Army to conduct mutinies. After the overthrow of Manchu rule, the gang members, the Green Gang and Red Gang etc, converged. There was a Japanese spy from the 1894-5 Sino-Japanese War, who lived among the Chinese secret societies for dozen years and later authored a book on the Chinese secret world. This spy was responsible for capsizing the Manchu fleet at the Yalu River and the Weihaiwei harbor. In 1910s, the gangs began to resort to criminal activities for making a living, after the objective of overthrowing Manchu rule was achieved. During this stage, you had the gang leaders, Huang Jinrong, Du Yuesheng and Zhang Xiaolin come to the forefront, and colluded with the French in running opium dens and the brothels.

There was rumor about Chiang Kai-shek and Chen Qimei being gang members. Not true ! We already covered that in another thread. Chen was assassinated by Yuan Sh-kai's spies for the reason that he was running out of funds and had no connection with the gang for raising money. Chiang enrolled in the gang as a means to write off the debts incurred in the stock trading. There are numerous examples of Chinese communists joining the gang for sake of getting released from the French Settlement prisons. Got that? As long as you nominally acknowledge the gangs as your "master", your debt would be forgiven, and you would be out of prison - because the gang leaders and the French were together, partners.

China, in fact, legalized the criminal gang at least 10 years earlier than what the United States did to the Chicago Mafia by allowing them to run legal business in Las Vegas.

Now, in 1930s, after Chiang Kai-shek consolidated the power, he ordered the gangs to do away with the criminal activities. Hence began the criminals' transformation into setting up legal businesses. The French settlement changed law as well, no longer giving protection to the criminal activites under the pressure of the ROC government. However, the French refused to shut down casinos and race course etc. There was the 10-year Nanking Decade, and the construction of the New Shanghai City to the east of the settlement territories and Yangshupu, and to the west of the Wusong Battery. You know what happened later? Du Yuesheng, later in his life, repeatedly said that Chiang had made him become a "decent" man, transforming him to a citizen from a gangster, and during WWII, Du and his desciples joined the guerrilla battles against the Japanese.

Chinese communists , in the 1920s and 30s, penetrated into the gangs as well, or in another sense, the Chinese communists recruited the rascals as members, i.e., the example of Shanghai union leader Wang Shouhua, and the CCP secretary Xiang Zhongfa. Yang Hu, a former secret society leader and one time Shanghai garrison commander, had several concubines, one of whom was a undercover Chinese communist, for example. During the communist takeover of Shanghai in 1949, Yang Hu and the gangs defected to the communist side. Huang Jinrong stayed behind in Shanghai, for another example. Du Yuesheng's desciples fled to HK where they expanded their ranks. HK and Shanghai used to be like twin-cities, with gang members shuttling back and forth. Chinese communists, to win over the gangs, often boasted that the "black society was always patriotic". That's the case before the economic reform of 1979.

After 1979, things changed. Across China, gangs sprang up, with no affinity to the HK and Shanghai nucleus. Since the communists had eliminated reactionaries by millions since 1950s, the new gangs had no way to trace their ancestors to any forerunner gangs. In modern China, the gangs originated from those early birds who made fortune by running the "proprietorship" businesses in the aftermath of the economic reform. After accumulating fortune for a dozen years, those guys became powerful enough to entangle with the officialdom, and hence they became each other.

[Gan]

Are the new gangs in China as ritualistic as the old ones?

It appears that the only thing driving them are monetary gains/favors.