With China playing a significant role in many illegal economies, Chinese organised crime groups are expanding rapidly around the world and reshaping organised crime markets. Among the illegal economies in which the Chinese criminal groups are involved are multi-billion-dollar online fraud and illegal gambling, drug trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and human trafficking for forced sex and labour.
In some areas, such as money laundering, they have rapidly achieved top echelons of crime even in regions far beyond Asia. This expansion of Chinese and other organised crime groups is injecting ever larger criminal proceeds into the global financial system, with banking hubs such as Hong Kong, London, and Singapore finding their established anti-money laundering structures overwhelmed by new money laundering methods, such as cryptocurrencies. In money laundering, Chinese syndicates are cooperating with a wide range of criminal groups, including Mexican cartels.
In other domains, such as the expansion of Mexican cartels’ methamphetamine trafficking into the Asia-Pacific region, the two sets of global criminal syndicates are on a collision path. Yet many common assumptions about the nature of Chinese criminal groups are false and policy tools are hampered, including because of the nature of the relationship between Chinese criminal groups and the Chinese government.
Martin Purbrick and Vanda Felbab-Brown will discuss these dynamics and policy issues.
