CHINA - Gangster trials highlight China s crime battle


The court in Chongqing, a city of more than 30 million people, is expected to reach verdicts in coming weeks on the charges against two promi nent defendants.

Wen Qiang, the former head of Chongqing s municipal jus tice department, is charged with using his official position to provide protection to organ ized-crime gangs. Li Qiang, a billionaire businessman who was until recently a member of the local legislature, faces nine charges, including organizing and leading criminal gangs, bribery and tax evasion. Officials say the two men ran an underworld empire that in- cluded prostitution rings, illegal casinos, bribery and murder.

The Chongqing crackdown is the largest local operation against organized crime in 60 years of Communist Party rule, according to Wang Li, a law professor at Southwest Univer- sity in Chongqing. Some 800 people have been formally ar rested and more than 2,000 others detained. A dozen high- ranking officials and hundreds of civil servants have been implicated.

The trials have focused na- tional attention on a scourge that has mushroomed since China began economic reforms in the late 1970s. The situation has worsened over the past decade, as rapid development combined with loosening controls on individuals, limited law-enforcement resources and widespread corruption has created an environment in which gangsters thrive, often in collusion with local authorities, say experts.

While experts say gang activity doesn t appear to have infiltrated the highest levels of China s government, it is an increasing challenge for China s Communist Party, which rates public anger about corruption as a major potential threat to its rule.

In Chongqing, Bo Xilai, a former commerce minister installed as the city s chief in 2007, has turned up the heat on the issue. The mafia crackdown is emphatically demanded by the people, as revealed to us by the numerous bloodshedding crimes, he is quoted as saying by the central Communist Party Web site.

The government says police have broken up nearly 13,000 gangs and detained 870,000 suspects since the latest nationwide crackdown began in early 2006. Some 89,000 of those had been formally arrested as of September, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Organized crime in China is coming back with a vengeance, says Ko-lin Chin, a criminologist at Rutgers University who studies Chinese gangs.

In addition to infiltrating Chongqing s government, organized crime has moved into sectors from property development to privately run bus routes to pork products, officials say.

Mr. Wen s sister-in-law, known as the Godmother of Chongqing, has already been sentenced to 18 years in prison and fined around one million yuan ($146,000) after her conviction on charges including organizing and leading a criminal group, operating illegal casinos, illegal imprisonment and bribing officials. A pair of 23-year-old twins received sentences of 17 years apiece on convictions of organizing and leading a criminal group and intentional injury of others, among other charges.

Judicial and law-enforcement officials in Chongqing have declined to comment on the cases.

Since the Chongqing trials began in October, dozens of gang members elsewhere in China have also been sentenced, with at least 18 receiving death penalties.

In early December, a court in the southwestern city of Kunming sentenced five people to death for involvement in a gang that dealt in drugs, counterfeit money, fraud and racketeering. In southern China, a court in Yangjiang sentenced five men, including mob bosses nicknamed Hammerhead and Spicy Qin, to death for murder and for running a massive illegal gambling empire. In Sichuan, police arrested 85 people in what officials called the largest drug bust in China s history.

Organized crime was rampant in China before the communists took over in 1949, but was largely extinguished in the decades afterward by the totalitarian Maoist state. It has flourished since reforms began in the late 1970s.

Chinese police receive small salaries but enjoy almost unchecked power over the increasingly wealthy communities they oversee. As a result, bribery is common, experts say. Without protection from law enforcement, criminal organizations would not be able to develop on such a large scale and to such a high level, says Pu Yongjian, a professor at the business school of Chongqing University.

In some cases, police are discouraged by local governments from cracking down on prostitution, gambling and loan-sharking, as long as violence isn t involved, says Mr.Chin of Rutgers.

These are very profitable businesses, he says. They support the local economies and are seen as part of a transition period towards development. There is a boundary kind of an implicit understanding between local officials and mafia-like gangs.

At times, ties between gangsters and governments have eroded public trust, sometimes pushing individuals to take matters into their own hands.

In September 2008, 18-yearold Zhang Xuping, of Xiashuixi village in Shanxi province, stabbed the local party chief to death. Villagers allege the official ran a gang that used harassment and violence to take over their farmland. Mr.
Zhang s mother, Wang Hou e, had previously spent a year in detention after she complained to authorities about property damage she attributed to the party boss.

The mafia forces will not only continue to exist, but become even more rampant.

Source:live Mint