The Transformation of Triad - Security Challenges

Roderic Broadhurst and Lee King Wa
state. The violence of the triad or ‘dark society’ plays a role in the success of
the various forms of criminal enterprise that have expanded in the lucrative
broader China and international illicit markets. These illicit markets, history
would suggest, survive in environments where corruption flourishes and
government underestimates, 227 or colludes with the actors in, underground
economies—the net becomes so wide that the fish swim through—as the
Chinese idiom suggests. Some of these markets are relatively new such as
copyright theft, waste disposal, internet-driven gambling or scams while
smuggling (including exotic animal species and products 228 ), adulteration of
products, 229 tax avoidance and money laundering continue to evolve and
exploit the disconnect between international standards regarding money
laundering and local practice. 230
With the advent of the ICAC in the 1970s, the enactment of OSCO and
related laws in the 1990s, law enforcement shifted from symbiosis (partial
capture) to one of concerted hostility towards organised crime and sustained
suppression of triad subculture that helped transform them to less visible and
more flexible forms. More research is needed to explore and clarify the
impact of the post-OSCO enforcement strategy, the role of penalty
enhancement, the effects on triad morphology and the extent of any spillover
from the political–criminal nexus in China. 231 The presence of triads
remains significant, although members are as likely to appear in business
suits as sporting tattoos, and to engage in financial manipulation as well as
extortion. 232 Nevertheless, we lack the auto-biographical accounts or the
transcripts of special commission and the testimony of former triads as has
occurred among mafia groups in the United States or Italy. 233 Thus our key
actors in contemporary ‘dark societies’ with some few exceptions remain
elusive and, until comprehensive evidence is assembled, the subject of
conjecture rather than clarity.
Attempts at suppression via confiscation of assets and enhanced penalties
appear to require strengthening, and vigilance must be constantly
227
According to Mei, ‘China’s Social Transition and Organized Crime’, many scholars and
legislators [e.g. Wang Hang Bing Deputy Chair of the National Congress, PRC] deny that
organised crime exists—perhaps as Mei argues because it does not fit the conventional Hung or
Qing form.
228
B. Moyle, ‘The Black Market in China for Tiger Products’, Global Crime, vol. 10, no. 1-2
(2009), pp. 124-43.
229
Mei, ‘China’s Social Transition and Organized Crime’, p. 212.
230
Z. P. Sham, ‘Money Laundering Laws and Regulations: China and Hong Kong’, Journal of
Money Laundering Control, vol. 9, no. 4 (2006), pp. 379-400; P. He, ‘Money Laundering a True
Problem in China?’, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology,
vol. 50, no. 1 (2006), pp. 101-6.
231
T. W. Lo, The Political-Criminal Nexus: The Hong Kong Experience; Chin and Godson,
‘Organized Crime and the Political–Criminal Nexus in China’.
232
A trend also noted by Hill, ‘The changing face of the Yakuza’.
233
Paoli, ‘The Paradoxes of Organized Crime’; see however, the judicial reminisces of Liu, Hong
Kong Triad Societies: Before and After 1997; and Yu, The Structure and Subculture of Triad
Societies in Hong Kong, with respect to recollections of incarcerated triad.
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