NCJ Number
162451
Journal
Crime, Law and Social Change Volume: 24 Issue: 3 Dated: (1995/96) Pages: 181-222
Date Published
1996
Length
42 pages
Annotation
This article explores the unique characteristics of Chinese criminal groups and their role in transnational criminal activities, and projects the future of these activities into the next century.
Abstract
In contrast to Westerners, Chinese people are born into a hierarchically organized society in which they never view themselves or others as free individuals, but as bound to others in an ever-expanding web of social relations that carry mutual obligations. The Chinese term for this concept is "guanxi." Because the influence of guanxi is so socially pervasive and its practice in Chinese societies so fundamental, the structure and varied activities of transnational Chinese criminal groups cannot be explained or understood absent this conceptual context. Under the guanxi social structure, Chinese transnational criminal organizations have performed extraordinary logistical feats. They transport up to 100,000 illegal aliens annually by air, land, and sea halfway across the world, evading all source, transit, and target country border controls; they counterfeit monetary instruments and access devices in widely dispersed facilities, transporting and distributing them within domestic commerce; they process, refine, transport, and distribute kiloton loads of heroin across the globe; they steal, clone, and globally market items of high technology such as semiconductor chips and chip designs, super computers, and cellular phone technology; they duplicate and manufacture items of intellectual property in globally dispersed facilities and transport and distribute them within domestic commerce. The collective profits generated by this illicit global commerce are staggering, as are the short- term and long-term losses suffered by industry and governments. Fukienese dialect speakers comprise the majority of influential members in the 14K and Sun Yee On triads, and throughout South and Southeast Asia they form the bodies of criminal organizations, as well as being powerful, wealthy business people. The economic, social, and political conditions in China have served as stimuli for emigration of the Fukienese. The arrival of more than 600,000 Fukienese in 8 years has reinvigorated the practice of guanxi in Chinese society in the United States. Unless Western governments and law enforcement officials understand the mechanisms of the Chinese criminal organizations, the social and legal environment in which they operate, as well as construct a functional paradigm to counter them, the Chinese criminal groups will not be curtailed. 88 notes