Understanding Chinese Organized Crime, where it originates, how it operates, and where is presently affecting the world – including within the United States – is important. Equally important is connecting dots, seeing where something unrelated is related, and understanding what it is not.
In a few paragraphs, Chinese Organized Crime – like Italian, Russian, Colombian, Mexican, Dominican, Nigerian, Sicilian, Corsican, Korean, Japanese, and indigenous American organized crime – is a trust-based, culturally unified, business-focused, criminally ruthless enterprise.
Unlike other types of organized crime, or what started being termed “Transnational Organized Crime” (TCO) about 25 years ago, Chinese Organized Crime does not originate in one place.
So-called “Triads” are shadowy, violent groups with origins that go back centuries, and come from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. They focus on integrated drug and human trafficking, including fentanyl, methamphetamine, ketamine, and cannabis, revenue sources financing each other, as well as money laundering, fraudulent documents, and intimidation.
This is where simple ends – and complicated begins. In modern America, another type of Chinese Organized Crime proliferates. If the Triads are serious, groups from Communist China are called “black societies.” They are growing.
Obviously, neither Triads nor CCP-origin “black societies” file annual reports. That said, borrowing from Plato’s Republic, we see “shadows on the cave wall,” which can make some educated guesses.
First, something new has happened and is accelerating in every county in the nation. Fentanyl availability, use, overdoses, and deaths are spiraling upward. From 2012 through 2022, fentanyl deaths increased each year, doubling from 2019 to 2022, when 73,654 Americans – mostly young – died from fentanyl. The chief source for the drug and chemicals? Mainland China.
The use of naloxone, a reviving agent, saves some lives, and is getting used more, but is not a treatment. More to the point, many who die from fentanyl do so anonymously, never tied to the drug, part of a polydrug overdose, auto accident, or suicide, hidden from the public by the family.
Second, Chinese Organized Crime groups are highly integrated, and involved in trafficking people, drugs, and precursors. They are now pushing “grow houses,” hiding in plain sight. They buy real estate for cash in rural locations – Maine, Oklahoma, Georgia, New York, California – to produce high-potency marijuana, distribute and profit, pulling buyers toward fentanyl and feeding crime.
In places like Oklahoma, Chinese Organized Crime – specifically THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, psychotropic Schedule 1) “grow houses” – is producing alarm and murders. Not coincidentally, states with Chinese grow houses have high fentanyl overdoses and deaths.
While data for all states facing Chinese Organized Crime is similar, Maine has seen a whopping jump in overdoses, indicative. In 2022, Maine had 2,498 overdoses. In 2023, 284 in January alone, 794 more in February, 928 in March.
The upward trend continues. In the first four months of 2024, the percentage of fatal fentanyl overdoses in Maine topped 2023, while nonfatal were 2,776 in 120 days. Not a crisis?
Third, from Maine to Oklahoma, Chinese Organized Crime is moving from a strange, untracked public concern to an industrial strength national and public security threat.
Record Chinese illegals – ending up in places like Maine – tell the story. In 2020, America had just 451 total, but by 2023 24,000. Reality is hard to deny. Chinese illegals, against all likelihood, are entering in record numbers, and trafficking drugs. Some estimates put the total at five million now.
Finally, the oddest is the indifference, as if many politicians see nothing. While data point to a burgeoning personal, community, and national issue, public figures issue statements, and do nothing.
Maine’s Democrat governor could not be bothered to speak about the issue personally, just sent word she was concerned Chinese marijuana undermined legal pot sales, and concerned about legal THC sellers. Really? That is it?
Apparently unconcerned about surging Chinese Organized Crime, clear ties to fentanyl, a threat to security for Maine counties, Somerset, Lincoln, Franklin, Kennebec, and south, she sees nothing.
Notably, the Democrat governor’s brother was involved in a real estate transfer of a Chinese grow house, ending up with someone in Guangdong, China. He claimed ignorance. The governor herself has a mixed record on drugs, but Chinese Organized Crime takes everything to a new level.
Where does it all lead? Not a good place, unless stopped. Together, we have to straighten up and understand Chinese Organized Crime is here, next door, in our communities, attacking us. Not to see the obvious, understand the extent, impact, and implications – not to fight it, would be tragic.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
