Transnational Asian Organized Crime:

A Critical Assessment

Kay Pih, University of California, Riverside

 

             Despite the best efforts of several criminologists in generating accurate assessments of “Asian Organized Crime”, there remain significant and disconcerting misinterpretations and distortions within the political arena, among law enforcement officials, the news media, and the entertainment industry. “Asian Organized Crime” is uncritically accepted and portrayed as a significant menace to not only the safety of the American public, but a serious national threat. Various politicians, law enforcement officials, and law enforcement agencies made noteworthy attempts in constructing the myth of a vast and monolithic criminal conspiracy that reaches the shores of Asia and the United States. “Asian Organized Crime” is unequivocally indicted as the main source of transnational drug trafficking and human smuggling. Subsequently such images are entrenched in the psyche of the American society. The entertainment industry often portrays these mythical Asian gangsters as mastermind and ruthless conspirators. The following piece juxtaposes the political construction of “Asian Organized Crime” and academic assessments of Asian criminality within the United States.

Defining Asian Organized Crime

             The category, “Asian Organized Crime” (AOC), must be properly clarified. Law enforcement agencies and government branches, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE), the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department employ the category indiscriminately in referring to all forms of criminal acts involving some level of coordination, and individuals who are either ethnic Asian in the United States or foreign Asian nationalities. Organized crimes are not necessarily criminal organizations. A criminal organization typically involves a well defined and stable hierarchical structure with officially defined positions and offices. Membership is normally permanent in nature. Organized crime, however, does not necessarily involve any permanent structure or membership. The involvement could be temporary in nature that dissolves after the transaction is completed.  Therefore not all organized and coordinated criminal acts are governed and sanctioned by criminal organizations, and a transnational criminal conspiracy involving Asian individuals does not automatically involve criminal organizations that are Asian in origin. Furthermore, Asian criminal organizations are not necessarily transnational in nature. While members of criminal organizations in Asia might have migrated to Western nations, they might or might not maintain their connections and operate as an agent of the criminal organization when they are engaged in various criminal activities. In reality, there is dubious evidence major Asian criminal organization have any stake in transnational crime at all. Finally, local Asian youth gangs do not necessarily have connections with the larger and more organized Asian criminal organizations.

 

 

 

gangs do not necessarily have connections with the larger and more organized Asian criminal organizations.

Drug Trafficking

             During the early Nineties, AOC was argued to be a significant national threat within the mainstream political discourse. The FBI and various members of the US Senate made various claims that AOC controls an international syndicate and a nationwide network for the distribution of heroin (Keene, 1989). The most evident of these accusations are repeatedly found in the U.S. Senate hearings (1984,1989, 1993). These hearings emphasized on the international nature of the Asian gang problem, with titles such as U.S. International Drug Policy -- Asian Gangs, Heroin and the Drug Trade (1993). In the report, an international network of heroin trafficking from Southeast Asia controlled by Asian criminal organizations was firmly established.

             According to this framework, Asian gang members with Chinese Triad affiliations utilize a vast network of businesses, such as hotels, traveling agencies, shipping companies and so forth to smuggle large shipments of heroin into the United States (U.S. Senate, 1992, 1993, Keene, 1989, Dobinson, 1993). The following description is found in another U.S. Senate report, “The New International Criminal and Asian Organized Crime (1993),

 

“Ethnic Chinese Triad members are heavily involved in heroin trafficking. The French Connection, the old heroin smuggling route…. has been replaced by the Chinese connection…. Ethnic Chinese, many of whom are triad, tong or gang members, dominate the Southeast Asian heroin business (p.29).”

 

             Chin Ko-lin's ground breaking study, Chinese Subculture and Criminality: Non-Traditional Crime Groups in America (1990), and the follow-up study, Chinatown Gangs: Extortion, Enterprise and Ethnicity (1996), are the most comprehensive and in-depth studies on Chinese organized crime and gangs to date. According to Chin, contrary to the claims of the FBI and the US Senate, heroin trafficking among the Chinese population in the United States mostly operates on a strictly individual basis. As the matter of fact, most of traffickers involved are not related to any Asian crime organizations.