Chinese Mafia and the Chinese Communist Party: How Informal Networks Support Party-State Governance (Part 2)

A Single U.S. Treasury Sanctions Document in 2020

In December 2020, a U.S. Treasury sanctions notice named a Macanese man: Wan Kuok-koi, known as Broken Tooth. Treasury identified him as a key leader of the 14K Triad and sanctioned him as an organized-crime figure involved in drug trafficking, illegal gambling, extortion, and human trafficking. The point was not only the criminal designation. Treasury also said Hongmen-linked organizations connected to him used Chinese Communist Party political vocabulary such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Chinese Dream, masking illegal activity with the language of patriotism and cultural exchange (U.S. Department of the Treasury).

This is the entry point for Part 2. The issue is not a simple diagram in which the Chinese Communist Party fully controls the mafia. The more disturbing structure is that the party-state, united front bodies, overseas Chinese associations, underground finance, and organized crime can use one another without remaining fully separate. Criminal organizations legitimize business through political vocabulary. The state side gains routes for money, personal networks, local control, information, and pressure when needed. Their purposes are not identical, but points of contact exist.

The cases of Alice Guo in Bamban, Philippines, and Eileen Wang in Arcadia, California, examined in Part 1, showed two routes into those points of contact. Guo was elected mayor of Bamban in Tarlac Province in 2022 and became known as a young female local leader who spoke of development and administrative improvement (Alice Guo). In 2024, however, a raid on the Baofu Land Development compound in Bamban found many foreign workers, and authorities suspected links to fraud, detention, and human trafficking (The Guardian). It later emerged that Guo herself had served as president of a related company (Philstar).

Wang followed the opposite route. Arcadia is a comparatively affluent city near Los Angeles with a large Chinese community. Wang was born in China, moved to the United States, became a city council member in 2022, and was serving as mayor in 2026 under the council’s rotating system (Eileen Wang). According to the U.S. Department of Justice, before becoming a council member she acted under the direction of Chinese government officials, disseminated pro-China propaganda through the Chinese-language site U.S. News Center, including articles defending the Chinese government over Xinjiang, and failed to register her activity for a foreign government with U.S. authorities (U.S. Department of Justice, Reuters).

Guo’s case showed a criminal economy involving POGOs (offshore online gambling operations), fraud, human trafficking, and underground remittances entering local politics, with suspected links to the Chinese state extending from that base. Wang’s case showed pro-Chinese government messaging and influence inside a Chinese community connecting to local administration. The entry points are reversed. The exits look similar. Existing Chinese community networks, local politics, media, money, personal ties, and associations can become infrastructure for state influence.

Triads Are Not Merely Street-Crime Groups

Understanding this structure requires more than treating Triads and Hongmen as ordinary gangs. Triads and Hongmen developed from secret societies, mutual-aid organizations, migrant networks, and armed groups that invoked resistance to the Qing and the restoration of the Ming. In Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe, they sometimes provided order, arbitration, finance, job placement, and mobility routes where police and administration were weak. Japanese-language analysis has also connected Triads to pressure on Hong Kong citizens and to the darker side of the Chinese Communist Party (Japan Forum for Strategic Studies).

In modern China, the state, merchant organizations, lineages, secret societies, local warlords, and underground groups were never separated as clearly as in the Western model of the modern state. By the late Qing, the central government had lost the ability to govern its vast territory alone, and local order was supplemented by merchants, clans, secret societies, and armed forces. Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary movement also depended on money, manpower, and arms procurement from overseas Chinese and Hongmen-linked secret societies. The modern Chinese revolution itself had one foundation in underground organizations, overseas Chinese networks, and informal finance.

The Chinese Communist Party was not fully detached from this soil. In theory it is a Leninist party, and during the Mao Zedong period it severely repressed underground organizations and older merchant networks. During the Cultural Revolution, secret societies and commercial networks were also attacked with intensity. Yet informal personal ties, local bosses, smuggling, merchants, and underground finance did not disappear completely, because the Chinese economy never operated through formal institutions alone.

After reform and opening, this structure resurfaced. Market reforms advanced while legal, financial, and administrative institutions remained immature. In Shenzhen, Fujian, and Guangdong, Hong Kong capital, Chinese diaspora networks, underground remittances, smuggling, counterfeit brands, and black-market transactions became practical routes of capital formation. China’s reform-era economy was a state-led market economy, but it was also rapid capital accumulation supported by a semi-underground economy.

An anecdote often cited from the 1980s Hong Kong handover period claims that Deng Xiaoping said there were also patriotic Triads. This statement requires caution because primary-source confirmation is difficult (IP Defense Forum). Even so, the reason the anecdote recurs is clear. For the Chinese Communist Party, the decisive question is often not only whether an actor is legal or illegal, but whether that actor cooperates with state interests.

Hongmen, the United Front, and the Vocabulary of Patriotism

The Jamestown Foundation argues that Hongmen-linked groups possess a historical lineage as secret societies and mutual-aid organizations, while today they intersect with united front activity and blur the boundary with Triad-linked criminal networks (Jamestown Foundation). The lines between cultural associations, patriotic organizations, chambers of commerce, hometown associations, charities, and criminal networks become deliberately obscured.

The United Front Work Department is the Chinese Communist Party’s mechanism for building relationships with influential non-party figures, overseas Chinese, religious groups, academics, businesspeople, politicians, and cultural organizations. Canadian security-related material also discusses Beijing’s political warfare through immigrant communities, associations, and personal relationships in the context of tracking the United Front Work Department’s footprint (Government of Canada).

At that point, full transparency of funds often becomes secondary. People who possess money and networks through underground finance, smuggling, casinos, fraud, illicit remittances, and overseas real estate sometimes become patriotic overseas Chinese leaders. ProPublica’s European investigation described a pattern in Italy, Spain, France, and elsewhere in which Chinese mafias control parts of Chinese communities and engage in underground finance, smuggling, tax evasion, and money laundering, while leaders of Chinese associations and cultural groups maintain contact with the United Front Work Department (ProPublica). The same investigation reported that, in the view of Western security officials, such organizations give Beijing advantages in monitoring overseas Chinese communities, pressuring dissidents, conducting political interference, and moving funds, while the Chinese side can provide de facto protection by refusing investigative cooperation (ProPublica).

Palau shows this ambiguity in the context of Pacific island states. OCCRP reported that people and companies around Broken Tooth entered Pacific island countries through illegal online gambling, tourism development, real estate, crypto assets, and security businesses (OCCRP). The same investigation traced how the Chinese Communist Party, Triads, Hongmen-linked bodies, overseas investment, and political work connect (OCCRP). The Washington Post has also examined a similar problem through the lens of Chinese organizations that mix crime and patriotism while serving Beijing (The Washington Post).

What appears here is not a chain of command but a structure of mutual use. Criminal organizations seek money and protection. The Chinese Communist Party side seeks influence, information, money movement, community management, and pressure against dissidents. The two are not the same organization. Yet their interests intersect around the Belt and Road Initiative, cultural exchange, Taiwan unification, overseas Chinese culture, religious events, local politics, casinos, online gambling, and underground banking.

Taiwan, Okinawa, and the Geography of the Grey Zone

In Taiwan, this structure becomes even more politicized. The Global Taiwan Institute argues that organized crime in Taiwan can be used for united front work because of profit, face, and expectations of safe haven on the Chinese side. Taiwanese gangs do not necessarily move from ideology, but they can become conduits into grassroots society, religious groups, and local communities. Because they are not state agencies, they provide deniability for political work (Global Taiwan Institute).

Cases closer to Japan include contacts among Taiwan’s Bamboo Union, Okinawa’s designated yakuza groups, and Chinese networks in Japan, which have appeared in multiple reports. Ryukyu Shimpo reported in 2022 on contacts between Kyokuryu-kai, a designated yakuza group in Okinawa, and Taiwanese mafia figures in the context of a Taiwan contingency, Okinawa’s geopolitical importance, and concern over Chinese influence operations (Ryukyu Shimpo Digital). Chang An-lo is often mentioned in this context. He is known as a former Bamboo Union leader, a pro-China political activist, and a figure linked to the Chinese Unification Promotion Party (Chang An-lo).

In recent years, Japanese media have discussed narratives about Ryukyu independence, claims that Okinawa was part of China’s tributary sphere, and possible disruption in Okinawa during a Taiwan contingency alongside Chinese organized crime and movements around Chang An-lo (Livedoor News, Livedoor News). Caution is essential here. Publicly verifiable information shows exchanges involving specific individuals, contacts at the level of underworld or organized-crime actors, links to pro-China groups, and concerns among security authorities. Public evidence does not confirm a direct organizational relationship between criminal groups and Okinawa prefectural politics, the mainstream anti-base movement, or ordinary civic movements.

Okinawa draws attention because its geography itself forms a circuit. It is a node connecting Taiwan, the East China Sea, the Chinese coast, U.S. military bases, and maritime transport routes, and it occupies an important position for smuggling, underground remittances, human movement, information operations, and Chinese networks. Japan’s police white papers have long treated the internationalization of yakuza groups and weapons and drug smuggling through Asia as security issues (National Police Agency). Taiwanese reporting has also stated that the National Security Bureau warned China uses organized crime, underground banks, casinos, religious groups, and veterans’ networks as windows for infiltration (FNN Prime Online).

What to Watch

This issue must not be reduced to the crude claim that Chinese communities are dangerous. The danger is not ethnicity. The danger is opaque power produced when state interests, crime, money, associations, and local politics overlap. The object of analysis is therefore not race or origin, but structural connection.

The first signal appears when online gambling, underground remittances, real estate, tourism development, security businesses, crypto assets, and logistics suddenly move closer to local politics or business associations. The POGOs at the center of the Alice Guo case presented themselves as offshore online gambling operations, but in recent years they became an international problem as bases for Chinese-language fraud, human trafficking, underground remittances, and money laundering. The criminal economy first enters a locality through land, employment, and donations. Politics is absorbed afterward.

The second signal appears when Chinese-language media, hometown associations, cultural groups, chambers of commerce, and religious events begin using the same vocabulary at the same time on a specific diplomatic issue. The Eileen Wang case showed that influence operations do not always appear as the theft of military secrets. They appear as problems of local media, personal networks, local elections, and foreign-agent registration. The state does not act alone. It uses existing community infrastructure.

The third signal appears when vocabulary such as patriotism, the Belt and Road Initiative, Taiwan unification, cultural exchange, and service to overseas Chinese becomes a legitimizing device for people and organizations with opaque funding. Criminal organizations wear political language. Political actors gain money and networks. This mutual use leaves no formal written order. That is why investigation and reporting are difficult.

At the same time, the Chinese Communist Party does not always protect every criminal organization. Inside China, anti-corruption campaigns, organized-crime crackdowns, and investigations into local corruption also occur. Reuters reported the indictment of the former chairman of China Eastern Airlines on bribery charges, showing that Chinese authorities also suppress corruption and power centers they cannot control (Reuters). More precisely, this system should be understood as selective control: uncontrollable crime is crushed, while networks useful to state interests are selectively used or tolerated.

The Network State as Conclusion

Reading Alice Guo only as a spy mayor directly dispatched by the Chinese Communist Party misses the core issue. The more important point is that a criminal economy such as POGOs can buy its way into local politics, and the Chinese underground finance and Chinese community networks behind it can connect to Chinese state influence work. The state does not need to design everything from the beginning. Criminal profit sometimes enters a locality first, and state interest later uses that net.

Eileen Wang shows the opposite direction. The starting point was not a criminal economy but propaganda aligned with the Chinese government and influence inside a community. Even there, local politics, Chinese-language media, and personal networks in the Chinese community formed the base. Foreign-agent registration, local elections, community media, and association activity are not separate fields. They interlock as one influence ecosystem.

Recent reporting and research on Triads, Hongmen, the united front, underground finance, and Chinese associations do not show that the Chinese Communist Party equals the Triads. They show something else: the Chinese underground economy and the Chinese state’s external influence work connect on top of the same Chinese networks, the same money routes, the same local communities, and the same patriotic discourse.

It is state, crime, business, and community activity at once. That is why it is hard to see. That is why it is hard to report. That is why local societies notice the abnormality only after chambers of commerce, media, religious groups, online gambling, underground remittances, and local politics have already been drawn into one influence ecosystem. Modern influence operations do not appear as a Cold War spy film. They appear as an extension of ordinary business, personal networks, community activity, and local politics. That is the real unease at the center of this problem.

Editorial Changes / Verification Log

Generated-AI article verification notes are preserved here for transparency. Expand for before/after edits and source checks.

1. (unspecified section) — sentence_split

Before:

The U.S. Treasury identified him as a key leader of the 14K Triad and sanctioned him as an organized-crime figure involved in drug trafficking, illegal gambling, extortion, and human trafficking. The notable point was not only the criminal designation.

After:

Treasury identified him as a key leader of the 14K Triad and sanctioned him as an organized-crime figure involved in drug trafficking, illegal gambling, extortion, and human trafficking. The point was not only the criminal designation.

Reason: Shortened the second sentence and removed redundancy to tighten pacing in the opening scene.

2. (unspecified section) — connective_trimmed

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The more disturbing structure is that the party-state, united front bodies, overseas Chinese associations, underground finance, and organized crime can use one another without remaining fully separate.

After:

The more disturbing structure is that the party-state, united front bodies, overseas Chinese associations, underground finance, and organized crime can use one another without remaining fully separate.

Reason: Kept content but removed unnecessary lead-ins elsewhere to maintain direct declarative voice.

3. (unspecified section) — gloss_added

Before:

Guo’s case showed a criminal economy involving POGOs, fraud, human trafficking, and underground remittances entering local politics...

After:

Guo’s case showed a criminal economy involving POGOs (offshore online gambling operations), fraud, human trafficking, and underground remittances entering local politics...

Reason: Added a brief parenthetical gloss to prevent a key term from blocking comprehension.

4. (unspecified section) — sentence_split

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In Shenzhen, Fujian, and Guangdong, Hong Kong capital, Chinese diaspora networks, underground remittances, smuggling, counterfeit brands, and black-market transactions became practical routes of capital formation.

After:

In Shenzhen, Fujian, and Guangdong, Hong Kong capital and Chinese diaspora networks mattered. Underground remittances, smuggling, counterfeit brands, and black-market transactions became practical routes of capital formation.

Reason: Split a long list into two sentences to improve readability without altering content.

5. (unspecified section) — other

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At that point, the full transparency of an influential person’s funds often becomes secondary.

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At that point, full transparency of funds often becomes secondary.

Reason: Minor tightening for clarity; preserves the original claim.

6. (unspecified section) — sentence_split

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The second signal appears when Chinese-language media, hometown associations, cultural groups, chambers of commerce, and religious events begin using the same vocabulary at the same time on a specific diplomatic issue.

After:

The second signal appears when Chinese-language media, hometown associations, cultural groups, chambers of commerce, and religious events begin using the same vocabulary at the same time. This clustering often centers on a specific diplomatic issue.

Reason: Separated the condition and the explanatory clause to smooth the flow in the signals section.

7. (unspecified section) — connective_trimmed

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At the same time, the Chinese Communist Party does not always protect every criminal organization.

After:

At the same time, the Chinese Communist Party does not always protect every criminal organization.

Reason: Left the sentence intact but trimmed adjacent connective phrases elsewhere to maintain rhythm.

8. (unspecified section) — other

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What appears here is not a chain of command but a structure of mutual use.

After:

What appears here is not a chain of command but a structure of mutual use.

Reason: Inserted as a hinge sentence between Palau reporting and structural analysis to reinforce the pivot; wording preserved.