Throughout the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, Hong Kong played a huge part in the international heroin business. However, no evidence supports that the port city ever manufactured heroin or other synthetic drugs. Instead, international traffickers used Hong Kong as a transportation hub for heroin from the Golden Triangle (an area including parts of Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and the Yunan province of southern China). Smugglers ran their product right through Hong Kong seaports, concealed it in legitimate cargo, and shipped it around the world. 

“Cutting houses” in Hong Kong refined what was left over and made profits from street vendors, who pandered the drug domestically. And many people bought it. Official estimates offer that of Hong Kong’s 6 million or so citizens, forty-fifty thousand are addicted to heroin. Health and social service people predict that the number may very well be four or five times that many. A brief from the Drug Enforcement Administration indicates that Hong Kong’s role in the drug trade has diminished significantly as Asian traffickers transfer their opium-product through other Asian countries. 

Another money-spinning activity has also gone international: the game of Chinese extortion. The Triads are notorious extortionists who maintain that reputation in Chinatowns all over the world. Restaurants, video stores, and other like businesses fall easy prey. Refusing to invest in protection would be an exercise in futility, and probably one in stupidity, risking the loss of property and maybe body parts. A Hung Kwan and his subordinate bruisers can be very persistent in forcing a manager to acquiesce. They don’t like nuisances, either. If a stubborn manager were to call on the police for help, he would risk suffering the knife-and-limb consequences of a “chopping,” the traditional Triad act of retribution administered with a meat clever. One leader of the Tung On society in New York reportedly extorted as much as $100,000 a week from restaurants alone. He was later indicted. 

Left: 18" inch Triad fighting chopper, usually favored by societies from central China. Right: Triad fighting chain, used during gang battles.

Frightening is that Triads are exercising their influence over American-based Tongs. A literal translation of the word “Tong” would read “meeting place.” Tongs were organizations established in San Francisco during the Gold Rush to protect the cultural identities of severely discriminated Chinese railroad workers and miners. Most Tong members were respected public benefactors, protecting local interests. However, some Tong groups set up opium dens, gambling halls, and brothels. And those that did suffered conflict with competing Tongs, which often resulted in violent confrontations. 

By the time the 1960s came, ethnic street gangs had been forming in areas of high Asian populations. Tongs eventually took control of the gangs and used them like military detachments against other Tongs and their gangs. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, inter-Tong disputes spilled bloody mayhem through the streets of San Francisco and New York. The worst of these incidents rang high death tolls, many of the victims being innocent by-standers. 

Tongs keep connections with overseas Triads in order to grab a piece of the lucrative heroin transfer. Tongs imported their drugs from the Golden Triangle with wild success through the early 1990s. However, recent statistics from the DEA reveal a drastic decrease in heroin seizures traced through Southeast Asia: a drop from 70 percent of all seized heroin in 1993 to only 10 percent in 1997.

Chinese organized crime remains a thriving beast. Its deep roots in Chinese history and prolific involvement in drug trafficking, extortion, and murder make it a particularly bothersome weed. It bothers the FBI, it bothers the DEA, it bothers the Hong Kong Police, and moreover, it bothers the multitude of honest people from which it sucks its life. Dedicated forces of police worldwide are trying to safeguard our communities, but this parasite from China seems unshakable from its host.

Black, David.  Triad Takeover.  London:  Sidgwick & Jackson, 1991.

Booth, Martin.  The Dragon Syndicates.  New York:  Carrol & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1999.

Freeh, Louis.  “Speech at the 17^th Annual International Asian Organized Crime Conference.”  6 

                     March 1995.

Merson, John.  The Genius That Was China.  Woodstock, New York:  The Overlook Press, 1990.

Seagrave, Sterling.  Lords of the Rim.  New York:  G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995.

Turner, Barry, ed.  China Profiled.  New York:  St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

“Asian Street Gangs and Organized Crime in Focus.”  Illinois Police and Sheriff’s News. August     
  
                     1997.

Drug Intelligence Brief.  Drug Enforcement Administration Intelligence Division, 1999.

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