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Chinese Organized Crime and Illegal Alien Trafficking: Humans as a Commodity

By Jennifer Bolz

The small Panamanian vessel Golden Venture ran aground in New York Harbor in June 1993, revealing a cargo of almost 300 Chinese illegal immigrants. Malnourished and mistreated, this human freight had been waiting to be smuggled on shore -- a privilege for which each passenger had paid between $15,000 and $35,000. As the ship crashed against the beach, ten of the immigrants drowned while trying to swim to safety.¹ They died thousands of dollars in debt, only steps away from the promised land.

Up to 100,000 Chinese aliens are smuggled into the United States each year. Even if caught, many citizens of the People's Republic of China (PRC) can avoid deportation under a presidential executive order that grants asylum from "birth-control persecution," Beijing's one-child-per-family policy.² American investigators and immigration officials have therefore begun to look beyond this loophole and are focusing on the larger menace working its way into U.S. cities: Chinese transnational criminal organizations.

Asian crime gangs have become formidable international actors-and international threats. These societies control the multibillion-dollar illegal economies of heroin trafficking, prostitution, gambling, extortion, money laundering, and alien smuggling-both in Asia and increasingly in the West. Economic difficulties within China compel unemployed, frustrated people to buy into the myth of a better life in the West. As poverty continues to deliver eager emigres into the hands of professional smugglers or "snakeheads," Western nations find themselves unprepared to fight the elusive and impenetrable Chinese "triads."

The Triads

The name "triad" was coined by British authorities in Hong Kong as a reference to the triangular shape of the Chinese character for "secret society." The character's shape symbolized the unity between heaven, earth, and man -- an indication of the semi-religious nature of many of these societies. Triads developed as resistance groups fighting to overthrow the non-Chinese invaders who ruled the Manchu Qing Dynasty during the seventeenth century. When Qing rule finally ended in 1911, these groups did not disband and instead evolved into criminal societies, Some of the newest and most powerful crime groups have sprung up in the last fifty years, often as a response to the lack of order and stability within China.³

Triad members are linked by language and lineage ties to villages of ancestral birth in mainland China. Through the use of ritual oaths of allegiance, which are enforced by threats of retribution and death, these groups ensure the absolute faithfulness of their constituents.⁴ Membership in a triad provides status as well as essential political and economic connections. A U.S. Senate report states, "Triad membership is thus a valuable asset to the new international criminal. Triad membership facilitates criminal activities in a manner similar to the way membership in business associations facilitates the activities of a legitimate businessman."⁵

Triads cooperate with local youth gangs as well as with lawful business and government associations. There are seven major umbrella organizations: the Sun Yee On Triad, the Wo Group, the 14K Triad, the Luen Group, the Big Circle Gang, the United Bamboo Gang, and the Four Seas Gang (see appendix).⁶ Exact membership figures are not available, but one of the largest triads, the Sun Yee On, is believed to control at least 56,000 members worldwide.⁷ Not every one of these seven societies conforms to the specific quasi-religious structure that defines a "triad," but all conduct their criminal activities through a similar network of international ties. Moreover, the larger groups manage the operation of dozens of subordinate triads, either by direct control or through cross-membership.

Triad Control of International Alien Smuggling

Triads have taken over the smuggling of illegal immigrants from smaller "mom and pop" organizations as an increasingly attractive alternative to drug trafficking because it promises multibillion dollar profits without the same severe penalties if caught.⁸ Earnings from the illegal immigrant trade is estimated to total S3.2 billion per year, yet is punishable in the United States by a maximum sentence of only five years in jail.⁹ Most who are convicted under current laws are sentenced to less than six months.¹⁰

The trip from China to the United States or Europe can take up to two years and cost as much as $35,000.¹¹ For those who wish to fly directly into the United States with high-quality forged documents, the price tag can reach $45,000.¹² Immigration and Naturalization Service agent Bruce Nicholl estimates that at least half to two-thirds of this price is profit.¹³ The snakeheads are able to keep dividends high by cutting back on overhead costs: the cargo vessels used for these journeys are often unseaworthy, and the Chinese must live for months in overcrowded squalor.¹⁴

The immigrants, most of whom are men, may not necessarily pay the full cost of the trip until several years after it is made. In order to leave China, a person pays his or her snakehead a down payment -- anywhere from $100 to the entire amount owed, depending on the financial situation of his family. The remainder of the cost is paid upon arrival in the destination country, and often illegal aliens must work off their debt in addition to sending money back to their relatives in China. If an immigrant cannot pay the local triad organization, then he or she may either be forced to work in underground slave-labor factories called "sweatshops"; be coerced into performing illegal activities, such as drug or currency trafficking; or be targeted for execution. The immigrant's family in China also could be in danger.¹⁵

The larger crime societies organize the transportation of illegal aliens through triad-owned travel agencies, who plan connection routes according to the geographic patterns of overseas Chinese communities.¹⁶ China's Public Security Bureau estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of Chinese all over the world -- in Moscow, Bangkok, Saigon, Africa, Latin America, and Europe -- cramped in cheap housing, waiting to continue their migration.¹⁷ Triad leaders in the small overseas Chinese community in Spain, for example, have a creative method for moving humans in and out of that country: identification papers for legal citizens are reused upon the person's death so that the population of 7,500 Chinese never changes and no one ever dies.¹⁸

Despite the far-reaching ties of overseas Chinese communities, the conventional headquarters for triad activities has been Hong Kong. In a new development, however, the groups most active in alien smuggling are now predominantly based in Taiwan. Asian organized-crime expert, Willard H. Myers III, says that the Taiwan nationals "represent the most powerful group in transnational ethnic Chinese organized crime," and that they "are in total control of the global transportation networks whether by air or sea.¹⁹ A senior U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service official concurred: "The boats are set up there, the money is laundered there. The behind-the-scenes people who control some of the gangs that pick up at airports, control safe houses, and collect money are also Taiwanese.²⁰

Such strong ties to Taiwan have raised concerns over government connections to triad societies. The most infamous example is the murder of San Francisco journalist Henry Liu, who wrote an unfavorable biography of former Taiwanese president, Chiang Ching-kuo. Members of the United Bamboo Gang murdered Mr. Liu at the request of the Taiwanese Defense Intelligence Bureau, according to a U.S. Senate report.²¹

Myers also notices a further international connection: "Wherever the Taiwanese government has made significant loans or grants and wherever large-scale investment has been made in establishing export oriented industrial facilities, the smuggling of people and commodities has followed.²² Guatemala -- a country that, until its recognition of the PRC, had received large amounts of Taiwanese foreign, military, and development aid -- has become a major base for smuggling operations.²³ Taiwanese nationals living in Guatemala and Southern California coordinate human smuggling operations between the two nations.²⁴ The Latin American connection goes deeper still: from this base, Taiwanese triad members reportedly "purchased the country of Belize and its Minister for Immigration, Said Mousa, turning Belize into an air gateway for entry of Chinese aliens by boat into the United States.²⁵ The Caribbean Islands, including the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, are also used as easy entrances into North America.

Chinese crime groups have become an international threat, therefore, precisely because of their ability to set up independent affiliates in other countries, including the United States. The groups most active in the United States are the Sun Yee On, with branches in New York, Miami, San Francisco, and Los Angeles; the 14K, with branches in New York, California, Chicago, Boston, and Houston; and the United Bamboo Gang, with branches in California, Honolulu, Phoenix, Houston, Chicago, and Miami. The Wo Hop To Triad, connected to the Wo Group, is quickly becoming the most powerful Asian crime organization in San Francisco.²⁶ The Fuk Ching Gang, based in New York City's Chinatown, is responsible for the failed mission of the Golden Venture.²⁷ These groups have formed occasional links with Asian-American secret societies and merchants' guilds, called "tongs," as well as with legitimate overseas Chinese businesses.²⁸

What makes these groups so successful in their development of an international trade in human beings? Why do thousands of Chinese each year risk death, deportation, and indentured servitude in order to reach a foreign country whose citizens are becoming more and more unsympathetic to the plight of illegal aliens? Why are the Chinese so anxious to leave their homeland while foreign businessmen from Japan and the West are equally as anxious to invest in China? Despite the optimism of the international business community, the reforms under Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping have neither ameliorated every economic woe in the south of China nor solved the problems of corruption at the local and national level. Instead, there remains an acute security threat posed by government links to organized crime societies. All of these factors push out low-income and rural Chinese laborers who are seeking a better life for their families by making fortunes in the West.

Reasons for Leaving China

An estimated 85 percent of Chinese illegal aliens originate from Fujian, the southern coastal province across the strait from Taiwan.²⁹ This area is known for its rapid growth under the recent economic reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping. Yet, not everyone has been able to share in this success. Those without government connections cannot survive in an economy increasingly biased toward the urban population and corrupted by local officials.

The southeastern provinces of China, home to almost all Chinese "boat people," have benefited from post-Mao economic programs that emphasize coastal development. However, the rapid rates of growth in gross national product (GNP), such as 13.4 percent in 1993 and an estimated 11.4 percent in 1994, do not accurately reflect the real situation outside the cities.³⁰ The initial windfall from the dismantling of communes has not been able to endure the emergence of cyclical economic overheating, which has hit the rural sectors hardest. Incomes in the countryside have not grown apace with urban areas, and therefore prices are relatively high.³¹ Declining real wages force families to use at least half of their monthly income on food alone; at the same time, state subsidies for education and health services have begun to decline.³² Inflation is high, reaching 23 percent in 1994 -- up from 1.6 percent in 1990.³³ In addition, nascent rural industries are viable only for a short time before the limited local market becomes swamped with homemade shoes and clothing.³⁴ Targeted development of the coastal region has also been a bust as well as a boon: poorer families are moved off their land to make way for large-scale industrial and commercial projects.

Willard Myers reports that "Jobs are plentiful for those who have completed middle school and college and less plentiful for those with an eighth-grade education, but non-existent for the uneducated, functionally illiterate agrarian families who have completed little or no school beyond the third grade.³⁵ Even menial jobs are in high demand due to the vast numbers of migrant workers from central China -- a floating population of as many as 100 million people.³⁶ These migrants soak up positions in city factories where foreign companies, such as Reebok in Fuzhou, prefer to hire the outsiders for lower wages and longer hours.³⁷ All of these factors make a journey to the Americas or Europe attractive, no matter how difficult. As one Chinese farmer told a reporter, "No matter how much it costs to get there, or how hard the work is, America is still better than this."³⁸

Even those Chinese who are relatively prosperous compared to ten or twenty years ago feel that they cannot get ahead due to widespread corruption. Without connections to party or triad members, it is difficult to export or sell their products.³⁹ Social liberalization, which has allowed scores of workers to leave their home provinces in search of work in the south, also creates massive opportunities for graft. The emerging connections between both local and national officials to triad organizations reinforces the pessimistic opinion of Chinese peasants that those with power and influence will always abuse them at the people's expense.

As China faces a new threat of widespread crime and violence, officials have started to make conspicuous overtures to illegal triad fraternities.⁴⁰ China's Minister of Public Security Tao Siju shocked the international community -- and even some of his own colleagues in Beijing -- when he admitted that the police have maintained contact with triad organizations in recent years. Anticipating China's 1997 takeover of Hong Kong, Tao said, "As for organizations like the triads in Hong Kong, as long as these people are patriotic, as long as, they are concerned with Hong Kong's prosperity and stability, we should unite with them. I believe that the more people we unite with the better."⁴¹

Tao also revealed that police links with the triads are not new: "Our public security organs have broad links and ties with different strata in society, including such groups.... When a state leader visited a foreign country, an organization that is similar to the triads you mentioned dispatched 800 of its members to guard our state leader against any danger.⁴²

The minister did not reveal which country or which leader was involved in this operation.

Such comments shocked observers in Hong Kong and in North America, but were not very surprising to the Chinese people who have witnessed evidence of government-triad cooperation and corruption for several years. An internal paper of the Ministry of Public Security first documented this connection on a local level in September of 1991. The statement verified the existence of "protective umbrellas" -- corrupt party, army, and police officials who protect the illegitimate businesses and criminal activities of the triad organizations.⁴³

In fact, Hong Kong detectives have learned that Minister Tao met with members of the Hong Kong-based Sun Yee On triad only a few days before his surprising speech promoting "patriotic" triads. Senior officers of the triad flew to Beijing and were escorted around the city -- a reception that was repeated several months later in Shenzhen -- in an effort to attract capital investment from the criminal syndicates.⁴⁴ A Royal Hong Kong Police Force report claims "that negotiations between the Sun Yee On triad society and the mainland Chinese Government have taken place and the establishment of the new (triad) Inner Council, who have no known political loyalties with the KMT, may come to an agreement with China, purely for financial benefits."⁴⁵ Through these ties, the Sun Yee On can expand into "seemingly" legitimate businesses in China and therefore improve their image; in exchange, the PRC can count on continued heavy investment across the border by the Sun Yee On.⁴⁶

If commercial investment is one area of cooperation between the triads and the Chinese government, alien smuggling is another. Local officials have crossed the line between mere noninterference to active participation: several well-placed junior party members have begun to sell foreign work visas on the black market. Clients can enter the target country with forged documents and then pay back the transportation fee, sometimes under coercion by enforcers. In such cases, it is difficult to draw the line between criminal and official snakehead.⁴⁷ Guangdong governor Zhu Senlin admitted the existence of this corruption: "A tiny number of cadres at the basic level and law-enforcement departments at the grass-roots level have an ambiguous attitude toward the struggle against smuggling and are even getting involved in and protecting smuggling activities."⁴⁸

For the hundreds of thousands of Chinese each year who illegally leave their homes for uncertain futures abroad, their motivations are closely tied to the economic and political conditions of their homeland. Therefore, while rapid development bypasses farmers and peasants, and as increasing inflation decreases their real incomes, an increasing number of Chinese inevitably turn toward organized crime. They may become involved in triad societies on the mainland, but just as many put their own and their families' lives at risk in order to find another chance in the West.

The Nature of the Threat to the West

The flow of humans from China is not likely to abate in the near future. To combat the growing threat of Asian organized crime in the West, law enforcement officials must tackle this new global problem through an understanding of the triad system and the nature of its threat to Western countries.

Triads are difficult to infiltrate because they are based upon strong filial and geographic loyalties. Because of their complex global networks, Chinese crime societies have the advantage of being highly intuitive and reactive organisms that can respond instantly to law enforcement penetration. They are both more organized and more decentralized than the agencies attempting to fight them.⁴⁹

Triads are hierarchical organizations, but commands are not necessarily sent from the top down. Members and affiliates have a considerable amount of freedom with which to conduct their own criminal activities. A member of a Hong Kong triad testified to a Senate subcommittee in 1992:

I was not required to pay any percentage of profits to the 14K leadership. Triads do not work that way. Triad members do favors for each other, provide introductions and assistance to each other, engage in criminal schemes with one another, but triads generally do not have the kind of strictly disciplined organizational structure that other criminal groups like the Italian mafia have.⁵⁰

Once they are caught, decentralization and cross-membership prevent gangsters from revealing too much information about any of the parent organizations. Even if the general structure of a triad network is known, down to the names and addresses of the senior officers -- which is the case in many U.S. cities -- the group will still continue, despite arrest or deportation.⁵¹

Links between triads and their greater or lesser affiliates are difficult to trace. A Big Circle member, for example, testified that he was the leader of a subordinate gang within the Big Circle called the "Flaming Eagles." He also was a member of the Wo On Lok triad, a subsidiary of the Wo Group in Hong Kong. "Every triad in Hong Kong has Big Circle people as members," he said. "Triads often recruit them to be enforcers."⁵² Clearly, the links between gang, tong, and triad are extremely confusing for Western law enforcement agencies accustomed to the European and Latin American corporate crime structure.

Police officials from many nations must therefore cooperate in order to be just as organized and reactive as the enemy they face. As a first step, U.S. law enforcement forces must hire more agents knowledgeable in Asian cultures and languages. As of early 1993, only one officer (federal, state, or local) in the New York area could speak the predominant Fukienese dialect of the Chinese community there, and less than thirty-five federal agents could speak any Chinese dialect fluently. Investigations have been stalled and thwarted due to an inability to translate wiretaps quickly enough to respond with force.⁵³

The United States could make up for this inexperience with closer ties to Hong Kong law enforcement agencies, which are the most active in triad investigations. The U.S. and Hong Kong agencies mainly cooperate on a case-by-case basis, and the Royal Hong Kong Police do not furnish American agents with comprehensive information, such as complete lists of suspected triad members. There is an active extradition agreement between the two nations, but it will expire in 1997.⁵⁴ The next few years, therefore, are crucially important in enlisting the help of the colony's police forces, including the recruitment of officers who are uncertain about the 1997 PRC takeover of Hong Kong and are willing to emigrate.⁵⁵ It is also important to strengthen legal relations with Asian countries. The United States does not have an extradition or evidence-exchange treaty with either Taiwan or China, although officials from Taipei have begun talks with the United States to propose mutual legal assistance arrangements.⁵⁶ These agreements are crucial to the successful prosecution of international criminals. Otherwise, careful efforts to identify triad members will be wasted while Taiwanese or Chinese defendants hide securely in their homelands.

In addition, penalties for trafficking in human beings must be strengthened to deter the smuggling of illegal aliens. An average of six months in jail per offense is not a significant deterrent. Immigration officials should also consider revising existing laws that allow aliens to be released on parole after which most never show up in court again.⁵⁷ The illegals are more likely to return to China voluntarily -- and to send home the message that the journey to America is difficult and uncertain -- if they see that they have little chance of integrating themselves into the U.S. economy. Of the almost 300 passengers aboard the Golden Venture, 175 are still in jail, 30 were granted political asylum, 45 were released on bond, 16 were involuntarily deported after they had exhausted their asylum appeals, and 5 agreed to return to China. However, the cost for keeping these 271 immigrants incarcerated is above $6 million, not including the legal expenses involved in taking their asylum claims to court. Due to the overwhelming caseload on the shoulders of the immigration lawyers, efforts should focus on streamlining the legal procedures, thereby cutting down costs and shortening the time the Chinese aliens must spend waiting in jail before they can be sent home.⁵⁸

Those who did return reported that the Chinese government punished them only mildly, including a brief imprisonment and a fine. Yet, after these migrants paid over $25,000 to take this journey, even a small fine of between $800 and $2,500 is a large burden.⁵⁹ The Chinese government could facilitate the return of their illegal aliens if they reduced this fine to a nominal fee and stopped jailing the deportees.

The use of diplomacy to settle international criminal cases has not been effective and must be reconsidered. Cooperative legal relations with the PRC, for example, were soured when a defendant sent to testify in the United States claimed political asylum and, under American immigration law, was not permitted to be returned to China.⁶⁰ Moreover, as non-state actors, triads do not fall under the control of any one sovereign nation. If pressured to leave Hong Kong or Taiwan, these organizations can easily relocate to China, North America, or Europe without great difficulty.⁶¹

One of the most fundamental ways to combat the illegal alien trafficking is to get directly at the source .Just as Western businesses still dream of an untapped "China market," so do the Chinese still believe in a golden land of opportunity in America. The international economic community should support stable growth in China and a reasonable pace of development along its southern coastline. Considering the Chinese desire to be a member of prominent international trading groups, the United States should insist on the continuation of economic reforms before the PRC is admitted into the World Trade Organization, successor organization of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Instead of making threats to prevent these men and women from leaving, the Chinese should be able to offer attractive economic inducements to stay. Until the Chinese are willing and able to remain in China to make their fortune, the triads and the reason for the triads' existence will continue.

Appendix

Asian Organized Crime
(Ethnic Chinese Groups)

Sun Yee Triad (Hong Kong)