Criminal Threats to U.S. Interests in Hong Kong and China: Testimony Before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee, April 10, 1997

• NCJ Number: 188667
• Journal: IALEIA Journal Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Dated: Winter 1998 Pages: 27-35
• Author(s): Roy Godson
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 9 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Presentation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This statement focused on threats to United States interests posed by organized crime groups in Hong Kong and China from the perspective of a Georgetown University professor who is also the president of the National Strategy Information Center.

Abstract

The statement argues that the major problem with Hong Kong is in the long-term. However, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries have mistakenly focused their attention on short-term transitional problems since the July 1997 transition in sovereignty. Hong Kong’s sophisticated communications capabilities, its extensive shipping and transportation links, and its status as a world financial center are as useful to organized crime as they are to business and trade ventures. Hong Kong is rarely the transshipment point for drugs, but brokers often control operations from there, and money laundering of the proceeds is handled there. In addition, triads are influential in local organized crime, but they are not the principal actors in regional and global enterprise and financial crime. Instead, a fluid structure of actors come together in a given enterprise to conduct this type of enterprise crime through a phenomenon called guanxi. In addition, Kong Kong’s increasing integration into the political life of southern China and the People’s Republic of China will also make it a greater problem in the long-term. Moreover, organized crime groups from other parts of east Asia have formed increasing links with indigenous criminal organizations. The Chinese leadership uses a proactive approach, but the experience of other regions suggests that its efforts are unlikely to succeed. Overall, conditions exist for the growth of organized crime and the political-criminal nexus. The United States government needs to develop plans, strategy, and infrastructure to address these issues and to develop a consensus among varied organizations to oppose criminality and the development of political-criminal conglomerates.