Chinese Mafia and the Chinese Communist Party: How Informal Networks Support Party-State Governance (Part 1)
What the Bamban Compound Revealed
In 2024, authorities raided a Baofu Land Development facility in Bamban, Tarlac Province, Philippines. The compound stood near the municipal hall. Investigators found numerous foreign workers and examined suspected links to fraud, detention, and human trafficking. Later reporting stated that the young mayor, Alice Guo, had served as president of a related company. The case moved beyond a local corruption allegation. It drew together Chinese-language online fraud, POGO operations, underground remittances, false identities, and suspicion over state influence.
Alice Guo was elected mayor of Bamban in 2022. In her public profile, she appeared as the city’s first female mayor and as a young, business-oriented politician promoting local development. She emphasized improvements in local administration through medical assistance and mobile public services, and Bamban received recognition in local governance assessments. Guo herself gained visibility quickly. The initial image shown in public information on Alice Guo was, at least on the surface, not that of an operative of a state agency, but of an emerging business politician entering local politics.
The problem behind that public face was POGO. POGO refers to offshore online gambling operations targeting customers outside the Philippines (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators). In recent years it became an international issue as a breeding ground for Chinese-language fraud, human trafficking, underground remittances, and money laundering. On the Bamban raid, The Guardian reported that many workers were found at the site and that authorities investigated links to fraud and human trafficking. Philippine reporting also confirmed Guo’s connection to Baofu Land Development. Philstar reported on the Ombudsman’s decision and stated that Guo had effectively remained the company’s president.
At the same time, suspicions over Chinese nationality and inconsistencies in birth records surfaced. In the Philippines Senate, the allegation that Guo was a “Chinese spy” drew major political attention. Yet the sequence requires care. The first core structure visible in public information is not direct infiltration by the Chinese government. It is the structure of a criminal economy centered on POGO: local interests, human trafficking, false identities, and underground money. Suspicions of a state connection appeared as an extension of that structure.
That sequence matters. The Alice Guo case becomes misleading if it is simplified into the claim that “the Chinese Communist Party sent in a mayor from the beginning.” The more disturbing structure is different. A criminal economy first enters a locality and connects to local politics through land, companies, employment, administrative services, political money, and personal relationships. Only after that does a pathway to Chinese state influence become visible. The state does not need to design everything from the beginning. Once existing criminal economies and Chinese networks take root locally, state interests can later ride on top of them.
The Opposite Pattern in Arcadia
The contrasting case is Eileen Wang of Arcadia, California. Arcadia is a relatively affluent residential city near Los Angeles and is known for its large Chinese community. Wang was born in China and later migrated to the United States. She was elected to the Arcadia City Council in 2022 and, under the city’s rotation system, served as mayor in 2026. Public information on Eileen Wang presents her as a China-born local politician who entered community politics.
The core of Wang’s case was not an underground economy. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, before becoming a councilmember Wang acted under the direction of Chinese government officials and spread pro-Chinese-government propaganda through the Chinese-language website “U.S. News Center.” The content included articles defending the Chinese government’s position on Xinjiang. The legal issue was her failure to register with the U.S. government for activities on behalf of a foreign government. The U.S. Department of Justice publicized the charge of acting as an unregistered foreign agent under 18 U.S.C. §951. Reuters also reported that the Los Angeles-area mayor was set to plead guilty to acting as a Chinese propaganda agent.
Wang’s case enters from the opposite direction from Guo’s. In Guo’s case, the criminal economy and local interests came first, followed by suspicions of connection to the Chinese state. In Wang’s case, opinion-shaping aligned with the Chinese government and community influence came first, and that person entered local administration. The former moves from criminal economy to state suspicion. The latter moves from community influence to a state issue.
Wang’s case still does not resemble a Cold War spy film. She was not accused of infiltrating military secrets or an intelligence agency. The arena was Chinese-language media, human networks in the Chinese community, local politics, and local organizations. This is the modern feature of influence operations. The state does not act alone. It uses media, hometown associations, commercial relationships, local notables, and municipal election channels that already exist.
The Same Structure Shown by Two Mayors
Placed side by side, the two cases have different structures despite similar surface language. A headline about “suspected Chinese agents” puts Guo and Wang on the same shelf. That misses the point. Guo’s case first requires analysis as the penetration of a criminal economy into local politics through POGO, fraud, human trafficking, underground remittances, and local interests. Wang’s case requires analysis as an influence operation involving pro-Chinese-government propaganda, foreign-agent registration, Chinese-language media, and local politics.
Yet the two converge at the same place. Chinese communities, local politics, online media, underground finance, criminal economies, personal relationships, and local elite networks can become infrastructure for state influence. Modern operations do not end inside state agencies. They enter ordinary business, immigrant communities, local politics, cultural groups, media, remittance routes, and informal mutual aid.
Understanding this structure requires leaving behind the one-track explanation that “the Chinese Communist Party fully controls the mafia.” More accurately, the state, the united front, overseas Chinese organizations, underground finance, and organized crime are not completely separated. They are arranged so that each can use the others when needed. Criminal organizations seek money, protection, and room for legalization. The party-state seeks influence, information, money movement, community control, and pressure against dissidents. Their objectives do not fully match, but they overlap at specific points.
A representative example of that overlap is Wan Kuok-koi of Macau, known as Broken Tooth. In 2020, the U.S. Department of the Treasury identified Wan 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. At the same time, it stated that his Hongmen-related organization used the language of the Belt and Road Initiative and the China Dream, presenting illegal activities as “patriotism” or “cultural exchange.” The U.S. Department of the Treasury release shows how criminal economies and political language overlap.
The point is not that criminal organizations simply obey the Chinese state. Rather, the criminal side clothes itself in political vocabulary such as “patriotism,” “Belt and Road,” “Taiwan unification,” and “overseas Chinese culture” in order to legalize and justify its own activities. The Jamestown Foundation also argues that Hongmen-related groups have historical lineages as secret societies and mutual-aid organizations, while today they intersect with united-front activity and blur the boundary with triad-linked criminal networks.
The same ambiguity has appeared in Palau. OCCRP reported a structure in which people and companies around Broken Tooth entered a Pacific island state through illegal online gambling, tourism development, real estate, crypto assets, and security businesses. A former Palau financial regulator stated that it was hard to believe such Chinese business figures and organized-crime actors were moving without the Chinese state’s knowledge, and raised the question of whether Beijing was tolerating them or supporting them from behind.
A similar pattern has been reported in Europe. ProPublica investigated cases in Italy, Spain, France, and elsewhere in which Chinese mafia groups controlled parts of Chinese communities and engaged in underground finance, smuggling, tax evasion, and money laundering, while leaders of Chinese associations and cultural organizations had contact with the United Front Work Department. In the view of Western security officials, these organized-crime groups offer Beijing advantages in monitoring overseas Chinese communities, pressuring dissidents, political interference, and moving funds. The Chinese side at times refuses investigative cooperation or provides de facto protection.
In Taiwan, this structure becomes even more political. The Global Taiwan Institute locates the reasons organized crime in Taiwan can be used for united-front work in profit, face, and expectations of safe havens on the Chinese side. Taiwanese criminal organizations do not necessarily move from ideology. For the Chinese Communist Party, however, they can become convenient conduits into grassroots society, religious organizations, and local communities. Because they are not state agencies, their involvement in political work also leaves room for denial.
The United Front Is Not Only an Organization Name, but a Connection Technology
Viewing the United Front Work Department merely as a propaganda organ misreads the reality. Canadian government-linked materials also explain that the department is involved in building relationships with overseas Chinese, religious groups, scholars, businesspeople, politicians, and cultural organizations. The analysis by the Government of Canada shows how the state systematically incorporates influence located outside formal state structures.
In this sense, the united front is more than the name of a department. It is a connection technology. It reconnects Chinese associations, chambers of commerce, religious organizations, cultural exchanges, hometown associations, local notables, underground finance, and in some cases organized crime to the Chinese state’s sphere of influence. In Western views of the state, legal and illegal, public and private, political and criminal are relatively clearly separated. The Chinese Communist Party’s external influence often operates along those boundary lines.
For that reason, Alice Guo and Eileen Wang are not merely two abnormal cases. Guo showed how a criminal economy called POGO can enter local politics and how Chinese-language underground money and human networks may spread behind it. Wang showed how propaganda aligned with the Chinese government can connect to local administration through Chinese-language media and local politics. The entry points are opposite, but the exit is the same. Existing networks become footholds for state influence.
Still, it is wrong to declare that “the Chinese Communist Party equals the triads.” The Chinese government has also conducted anti-corruption campaigns, organized-crime crackdowns, and local corruption investigations inside China. For example, Reuters reported the bribery indictment of the former chairman of China Eastern Airlines. The Chinese state also destroys criminal organizations it cannot control. The issue is selective control: networks that remain manageable and useful to state interests can be tolerated, used, and politically incorporated.
Conclusion to Part 1
The pattern visible in this first part is not a simple conspiracy theory. It is not a story in which the Chinese Communist Party issues orders to every criminal organization. The opposite point makes the problem complex: the state does not fully control everything. Criminal economies seek profit. Chinese associations seek status and protection. Local politicians seek votes and money. Media outlets seek readers and influence. When state interests overlap with those motives, the united front, underground finance, local politics, cultural exchange, online gambling, and hometown networks form a single influence ecosystem.
Reports and warnings around the same structure have increased in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Europe, North America, and around Okinawa in Japan. On Hong Kong, the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies has discussed the issue of triads and repression of citizens, and IP Defense Forum has also been cited as an essay containing statements that are difficult to verify. This article centers on materials that can be checked. On Hongmen, The Washington Post has also reported the mixture of crime and patriotic rhetoric.
Around Japan, reports have addressed contacts and warnings involving Taiwan’s Bamboo Union, Chang An-lo, the China Unification Promotion Party, and Okinawa’s Kyokuryu-kai. Ryukyu Shimpo reported in 2022 on Okinawa’s designated organized-crime group, Taiwan mafia, and concerns over Chinese influence operations in a security context. Public information on Chang An-lo places him at the intersection of Taiwanese organized crime and pro-China political activity. Recent reporting has also addressed relations between Chinese mafia and Okinawan organized crime and Chang An-lo and the Okinawa issue. However, no public evidence confirms a direct connection between ordinary civic movements or the prefectural government in Okinawa and criminal organizations. This distinction is essential. The Police White Paper has long warned of international drug and weapons smuggling, and FNN Prime Online has reported warnings from Taiwan’s national security authorities about infiltration through religion, underground banking, casinos, and organized crime. These also belong to the same gray-zone problem.
The two mayoral cases of Alice Guo and Eileen Wang do not show an abstract “China threat theory.” They show that when local politics, Chinese communities, media, underground funds, criminal economies, and patriotic rhetoric overlap on the same network, state influence enters local society without passing through official diplomacy or intelligence agencies. The conclusion of Part 1 is here. The informal power that supports modern party-state governance is the capacity to connect things that appear outside the state back inside the state only when needed.
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:
Investigators found numerous foreign workers there and examined suspected links to fraud, detention, and human trafficking. Later reporting also stated that the young female mayor Alice Guo had served as president of an affiliated company.
After:
Investigators found numerous foreign workers and examined suspected links to fraud, detention, and human trafficking. Later reporting stated that the young mayor, Alice Guo, had served as president of a related company.
Reason: Removed redundancy and split clauses for cleaner pacing.
2. (unspecified section) — gloss_added
Before:
POGO refers to offshore online gambling operations targeting customers outside the Philippines.
After:
POGO refers to offshore online gambling operations targeting customers outside the Philippines (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators).
Reason: Added brief parenthetical to clarify the acronym without adding new claims.
3. (unspecified section) — connective_trimmed
Before:
The first core structure visible in public information is not direct infiltration by the Chinese government. It is the structure of a criminal economy centered on POGO: local interests, human trafficking, false identities, and underground money.
After:
The first core structure visible in public information is not direct infiltration by the Chinese government. It is a criminal economy centered on POGO: local interests, human trafficking, false identities, and underground money.
Reason: Trimmed repetition to tighten the sentence.
4. (unspecified section) — sentence_split
Before:
In 2020, the U.S. Department of the Treasury identified Wan 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.
After:
In 2020, the U.S. Department of the Treasury identified Wan as a key leader of the 14K Triad. It sanctioned him as an organized-crime figure involved in drug trafficking, illegal gambling, extortion, and human trafficking.
Reason: Separated the actions for clarity and cadence.
5. (unspecified section) — other
Before:
Wang’s case enters from the opposite direction from Guo’s.
After:
Wang’s case enters from the opposite direction from Guo’s.
Reason: Kept wording but repositioned the sentence to serve as a clear pivot in the section.
