About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


16 Trends Org. Crime 1 (2013)

handle is hein.journals/trndorgc16 and id is 1 raw text is: Trends Organ Crim (2013) 16:1-12 DOI 10.1007/s12117-012-9183-z The Dragon's shadow: an introduction to the special issue on 'Chinese organized crime' Georgios A. Antonopoulos Published online: 20 December 2012 O Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012 Abstract This paper provides an introduction to the articles submitted to the special issue of Trends in Organized Crime bringing forward numerous empirical research findings and theoretical accounts on Chinese organized crime in China and beyond. Keywords Chinese organized crime - Triads - Black Societies - Red Mafia - Illegal markets Chinese 'organized crime' is not a new phenomenon. Historical and criminological research has suggested, for example, that as early as the final years of the Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD 220) poor peasants, street hawkers and drifters - among other - established clandestine sectarian 'organizations' to acquire resources (Huang 2007). Chinese 'organizations' have also been highly active in labor racketeering, prostitution, illegal gambling, immigrant smuggling and drug trafficking since the late 19th century in the United States (Mclllwain 1995), and long before the frenzy about Italian 'organized crime'. In the beginning of the 20th century and before World War I some demand for gambling, drugs and, of course, prostitution encour- aged many marginalized and disadvantaged Chinese migrants to participate in the vice industry of several US cities, an economic sector that was often placed in what Light (1977: 472) calls, a culturally-provided framework that were Chinese secret societies. In the 1920s Britain, prominent entrepreneurs from the Chinese community appeared to be involved in a wide range of 'organised criminal activities'. One such example was the notorious 'Brilliant' Chang, whose rise in London's (so called) 'underworld' was meteoric, and was considered the pope of drug and (white) woman trafficking in the West End although there was little evidence proving his involve- ment in those markets (Morton 1998; Hobbs 2013). G. A. Antonopoulos (E) School of Social Sciences & Law, Teesside University, Middlesbrough TS1 3BA, United Kingdom e-mail: G.Antonopoulos@tees.ac.uk 4L Springer