Hong Kong Outlaws

Needle in hand, the junkie named Africa searches his arm for a vein. Any vein will do.

"Tie off, motherfucker," his friend Leon reminds him.

In his haste to satisfy his need, Africa has forgotten one of the most elementary junkie rituals: wrapping a strip of rubber cord around his bicep so that his veins bulge. That task accomplished, he pierces his right arm. His soft brown eyes lift toward the ceiling. He lies back on his mattress and lets out a long, mournful sigh.

In tiny, dormitory-sized rooms in the Marion Hotel on Broadway in upper Manhattan, Africa and Leon are free to indulge their self-destructive cravings. Both men have been diagnosed as HIV-positive; they are using the nine-story dwelling as a flophouse while they wait to die. Emaciated addicts, many of whom contracted the AIDS virus from using the dirty needles that litter the floors, wander squalid hallways, openly shooting up.

On the fourth floor, in Africa's room, 40-year-old Leon rhapsodizes about the increased purity of heroin now circulating in New York. A longtime addict, he gives his full endorsement to today's product: "The shit is slammer."

Leon's enthusiasm is understandable. In recent years, the quality and quantity of the dope has indeed been on the rise, as a result of the expanding efforts of a major new supplier: the Hong Kong mob. In Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and other cities, evidence of its success is plain. Agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration have reported unprecedented seizures of heroin coming into the U.S. In Congress, hearings have been held to discuss smokable heroin, a choice for users who shun needles. In hospitals across the country, overdoses are on the rise.

To junkies like Africa and Leon, the identity of their ultimate supplier remains a mystery shrouded by myriad street sellers, mid-level suppliers and international brokers. For people in law enforcement who follow the drug to its source, the facts are more discernible but far from comforting.

The heroin business is part of a sprawling international empire with its heart in Southeast Asia. Although this empire has existed for centuries, surprisingly little is known about how it works. Law-enforcement officials have struggled for years to understand how the heroin business interconnects with a staggering array of rackets from prostitution, gambling and money laundering to the smuggling of illegal aliens. Impressed by the vastness of this empire, some have misleadingly dubbed it "the new Mafia." In law-enforcement circles, federal agents refer to it more pointedly as the Chinese connection.

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In the Eighties, as the influence of La Cosa Nostra waned, no criminal group in the world made more progress than that of the ethnic Chinese. Since the early Fifties, immigrants have been fleeing social and economic oppression throughout Asia, settling in South and Central America, Australia, the Caribbean, Canada and the U.S. The overwhelming majority of these immigrants have shown themselves to be among the most industrious citizens in the world. Although certainly smaller in size, the criminal element among them has proved to be equally industrious.

For decades, these Chinese criminal groups were content to operate within the confines of the world's Chinatowns, extorting small businessmen, extending usurious loans and capitalizing on the Chinese community's insatiable affection for gambling. Today, the burgeoning heroin business has changed all that.

In 1984, Southeast Asian heroin constituted only five percent of the market in New York City, home to nearly half the heroin addicts in the U.S. By 1989, that total had increased to 80 percent. The purity levels of China white, as the drug is commonly known, are so high that Mexican, Pakistani and Turkish sources have been virtually eliminated.

Back in 1968, when Popeye Doyle shattered the French connection and seized 246 pounds of heroin with a purity level far below that of China white, the supply dried up and prices soared. The most startling fact of recent years is that even with much larger seizures from coast to coast, junkies around the country hardly seemed to notice.

Says DEA special agent Richard La-Magna, who has been investigating the Chinese connection for years, "It's a whole new game. We're seeing volume and projected revenues that must make this the most profitable criminal business on the face of the earth."

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The forces behind today's dope trade form a labyrinthine underworld that begins in the Golden Triangle--the poppy-growing region that encompasses northern Laos, Thailand and Burma--and spreads to transshipment points in Bangkok, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The controlling interests are diverse, yet for such a vast criminal network to exist, many international law-enforcement agencies suspect the triads, Chinese secret societies founded in the 17th Century. Originally an underground political movement formed to overthrow the corrupt Ming dynasty, triads evolved into a criminal brotherhood with similarities to the Sicilian Mafia.

Today, triad societies are spoken of with awe throughout the Far East. They are believed to control virtually all organized criminal activity in Hong Kong. Their name derives from the equilateral triangle used as their symbol, representing heaven, earth and man. Triad membership is for life. Traitors are executed, often with a single bullet to the skull.

The societies are currently facing the biggest challenge in their 300 years of existence. In 1997, the British government's 99-year lease on Hong Kong expires and the territory comes under the control of the People's Republic of China. When the changeover comes, a considerably less tolerant regime will come with it. Enterprises that thrived under laissez-faire capitalism could well perish in the grip of a totalitarian regime. Hong Kong's criminal element is understandably nervous. Already, law-enforcement groups around the world have been warning their governments of an impending triad incursion. In the next five years, triad members may outnumber the Mafia in this country three to one.

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To understand why the triad members are running, it helps to pay a visit to Kowloon's Walled City, the territory's most notorious ghetto. Located in the shadow of noisy Kai Tak International Airport, the area--as is much of Hong Kong--is a tightly packed enclave of concrete dwellings, just 100 yards wide by 200 yards in length. Within the walls, a maze of dank four-foot-wide passageways leads underground. Overhead, exposed electrical wiring dangles precariously and pipes leak a rust-colored sludge. An occasional concrete stairwell leads into darkness.

In 1842, when China ceded Hong Kong to the British, it claimed jurisdiction over the Walled City. The British apparently felt the compound was more trouble than it was worth and refused to police or even govern its approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Predictably, the area became a triad breeding ground. Opium merchants, child-prostitution rings and gangsters on the run found refuge here. Other strange activities proliferated, from the practice of unlicensed dentistry to the selling of poisonous snakes.

The Chinese government has made it clear that when it takes over in 1997, it would prefer that the Walled City not be there. In the spirit of cooperation, Crown forces have been slowly evacuating the area. Rodents and alley cats are now the primary inhabitants.

The Walled City is scheduled for demolition, a fate that some believe may await other triad sanctuaries come 1997. Although the homes may be destroyed, the residents and their enterprises will surely move elsewhere.

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Tsim Sha Tsui, one of Hong Kong's many neon-lighted commercial centers, is a prosperous triad stronghold. The fruits of capitalism are amply displayed with glittering jewelry stores, huge shopping malls and lavish night clubs jam-packed within a few square blocks. The average citizen probably wouldn't know by looking at it, but the area is considered to be the domain of Sun Yee On, one of Hong Kong's largest triads. Many of the stores pay protection money; the night clubs, bars and restaurants are guarded by triad bouncers; and a portion of the profits from producing and marketing counterfeit brand-name merchandise goes to Hong Kong gangsters.

Beyond Tsim Sha Tsui, in a small coffee shop on the outskirts of Kowloon, a young Sun Yee On member has agreed to talk. Knowing that the betrayal of his oath of secrecy is punishable by death, the man--we'll call him Louie Leung--will answer questions only if his real name is not used and the location of the interview is not described in much detail. "I must warn you," he (continued on page 168)Outlaws(continued from page 96) tells his interviewer, "if anyone learns of this conversation, both me and you will be in a lot of trouble."

The motive for Louie's willingness to talk stems from his dissatisfaction with triad life. Five years earlier, far away in Brooklyn, two fellow Sun Yee On members were executed on the street in the middle of the day. New York police suspect that the murder of Billy Wong Ming-fung and Wong Chi-ming, both 25, arose from a power struggle for control of an illegal casino in Chinatown. The case was never solved, but Leung claims he knows who ordered the killings. "Sun Yee On officers in New York hired professional assassins to murder their own members," he says.

He goes on to say that he was disgusted that triad officers would order the killing of fellow members. "I was always told that when there are disputes between members, no matter what, we should sit down and work it out. As far as I am concerned, Sun Yee On violated its own oath." Since the murders, he says, he has tried to avoid triad activities and live a "clean, law-abiding life."

But Leung's growing disenchantment with his triad affiliation was a long time coming. Eighteen years earlier, when he was first inducted into Hong Kong's secret criminal fraternity, he couldn't have been more proud. Like many youths that have come from poor and working-class families, he was recruited while hanging out in video arcades and playing soccer in his neighborhood.

When Leung was barely a teenager, he was roughed up by a group of gang members and told that if he didn't want it to happen again, he would have to join their organization. He acquiesced. For one year he waited to be initiated, a period known in the triad lexicon as "hanging the blue lantern."

One evening, Leung and a group of 20 or so other youths were rounded up by their dai lo, or big brother, who had sponsored their membership. The inductees were scared to death. "There was a small shrine in the room, with a statue of an ancient Chinese warlord. We were each given a stick or two of incense, which was lit. Then we recited the thirty-six oaths, extinguishing one incense after each oath. We all stood in a circle and they pricked our middle fingers with a needle. A drop of blood from each of us was mixed with water in a bowl. The bowl was passed around and we all had to take a drink."

An egg with a face drawn on it was placed before the group. Each inductee was told to slice the egg with a knife. The egg represented the face of an informer. By cutting the egg with a knife, the triad members pledged to seek vengeance against any member who cooperated with the police.

"From that day forward," Leung says, "I am a triad soldier, what we call a Forty-Nine. If I talk with anyone outside the group about triad business, my whole family will die. I will be killed by a tiger in the forest. If I go swimming, the fish will eat me."

Having become part of one of the oldest and most revered criminal organizations in the world, he began practicing the ways of brotherhood, triad style. "Me and the other Forty-Nines, we meet maybe a few times a month. We discuss new groups operating in our territory. Should we beat them up, take them out? We go to the market for extortion. We take maybe five dollars each from all the small businessmen. When we walk into a restaurant and eat, we don't pay for the food. We just sign the Sun Yee On symbol on the bill and walk out."

After eight years of dedicated involvement, Leung was promoted to the prestigious rank of 426, or Red Pole fighter. Only the triad leader, or Dragon Head, can authorize such a promotion. In ancient times, the Red Pole was the triad's most respected warrior, a proletarian symbol of righteousness and liberation. Today, his primary role is to punish triad rule breakers and terrorize shopkeepers who are slow to pay extortion.

"If some brother make a mistake," he explains, "we slap him in the face and give him a verbal warning. If he don't listen, we beat him up. Then we cut him. Also, we protect businesses in our territory. One time there was a shooting in some Sun Yee On mah-jongg club. We tell the parties involved, 'Listen, go make your living somewhere else.' They didn't listen, so we went after them."

Leung is quick to add that, given the triads' reputation, violence is not often required. Any Hong Kong businessman knows the routine. In fact, many so-called legitimate businessmen are themselves members of a triad, having joined to enhance their chances of succeeding in a highly competitive environment. This relationship between business and criminal elements has been termed "the Chinese waltz," and it is a dance familiar to any Chinese gangster--from low-level racketeers like Leung to the most powerful international heroin traffickers.

When asked whether or not it would be possible for a professional criminal to exist in Hong Kong without being a triad member, Leung laughs. "Yes, of course. If this person had a death wish."

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The omnipotence of triads is a shared preoccupation in Hong Kong. At least once a week, the South China Morning Post--the territory's largest English-language newspaper--contains a triad-related article. Estimates by the Royal Hong Kong Police place membership somewhere around 160,000, or three percent of the population. There are close to 50 triad groups, with turf established along territorial lines.

Typically, rank-and-file membership is composed of working-class kids roped in at a young age, enamored with the triad's ritualistic trappings and the sense of importance provided by the secret societies. Yet the attractions have proved to be far-reaching, with solicitors, policemen, an occasional legislator and white-collar types having opted for the benefits of triad life.

Despite a long-standing ordinance that prohibits Hong Kong residents from joining secret societies, attending triad meetings or possessing paraphernalia that in any way relates to their activities, the societies' broad sphere of influence has consistently bedeviled law enforcement. "We try," says David Tong, an assistant commissioner with Hong Kong's Customs and Excise Department, "but so many citizens are fearful and uncooperative."

Tong's office on the ninth floor of the Harbor Building overlooks Hong Kong's port, which hosts a colorful panorama of ferries, junks, sampans and other seagoing vessels. Gulls swoop the shoreline looking for morsels amid a constant swirl of activity along the docks. The harbor is the world's second busiest, after Rotterdam, with as many as 5000 craft passing through each day. For Tong and other local lawmen, it is a continuing nightmare.

Shipments of China white are smuggled through Hong Kong's port every day. Fishing trawlers chug up the coast from Thailand and off-load the dope in the South China Sea. Small junks bring the contraband to Hong Kong's container terminals, where triad members see that it is unloaded. This pattern was first established a century ago, when the British government systematically foisted tons of opium on an unsuspecting Chinese populace, creating millions of addicts. "Today," says Tong, "the heroin trade is carryout."

It would be inaccurate to say that triads control the heroin business. An individual Chinese entrepreneur in the U.S. can initiate a major deal, whether he is a member of a triad or not. It is unlikely, however, that the deal will proceed as smoothly as he would like without some help from the triads. A well-known code phrase or secret handshake associated with the Sun Yee On, 14K or Wo Hop To triad can consummate a deal. Triad connections move the dope from Hong Kong to Europe and the U.S.

The loosely structured manner in which triad affiliations enhance large-scale dope transactions has perplexed some Westerners. Trained on a generation of caporegimes, consiglieres and capo di tutti capis, American law enforcement has had a hard time grasping the opaque ways triads operate internationally.

At the street level, of course, the triads function much like criminal mobs anywhere: Gangsters enforce their will through fear and intimidation, and group loyalty is brutally upheld. Unlike the American Mafia, though, which has a rigid corporate structure, upper-echelon triad members are free to initiate criminal projects on their own and use their affiliations as they see fit. "It's more in the nature of a brotherhood like the Freemasons than a Mafia family," says a senior officer with the Hong Kong police.

Over the years, triads have firmly established their role as an integral part of free-market capitalism, but they can play the other side of the fence as well. In the face of competition from American and European expatriates, for instance, some Chinese businessmen have exploited the triad mystique while espousing the belief that it represents a sacred historical tradition.

But that game is just about over. Now that they face the prospect of a hostile government at the century's end, triad members are eager to make one final big killing under the old regime. To do so, they are pushing their drug trade with extraordinary vigor. It is, quite literally, their passport to the world.

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In New York City's Chinatown, the prospect of Hong Kong's impending change in status has already begun to reshape the community's traditional boundaries. Elaborate triad-run smuggling networks, in which illegal aliens pay huge fees to be shuttled through Canada and Central America, are flourishing as never before. Adjacent neighborhoods like Little Italy, once a Mafia stronghold, have been pressured by immigrants from Hong Kong, mainland China and other Asian ports of call.

For many years, Chinatown's ruling structure has remained the same. Tongs (business associations) dole out jobs and housing to loyal members. Violent street gangs, allegedly controlled by the tongs, uphold territorial boundaries. Whether or not an infusion of triad gangsters will unsettle this balance of power is a source of much debate.

According to Leung in Hong Kong, one triad has already begun to stake its claim. On frequent visits to New York, he says, he has met many fellow Sun Yee On members. "One guy," he contends, "a Red Pole fighter, was sent to Chinatown for only one reason: to oversee the migration of Sun Yee On into the U.S." The vessel they hope to use, he says, is the Tsung Tsin Association, one of Chinatown's wealthiest tongs. Situated in the heart of Chinatown, the association's seemingly placid, nondescript redbrick facade is the perfect cover for one of Chinatown's liveliest gambling dens.

In 1988, infighting over a Tsung Tsin Association election led to a number of shootings. One longtime member filed a lawsuit alleging that fraud and bribery tainted the election of the association president, Tony Ng. The lawsuit claimed that Ng had been placed in office by Paul Lai, a former president and current association "advisor for life." According to Leung, both Ng and Lai are Sun Yee On members, having been initiated into the society in a secret Hong Kong ceremony.

The fraud and bribery charges against Lai were never proved, but in a 1988 judicial hearing, even more serious allegations were raised. A lawyer for the complainant accused Lai of hiring a gang of thugs, which he housed in an apartment on the fourth floor of the association. When asked about his triad affiliation, Lai denied even knowing what the word meant.

The possibility that one of Hong Kong's largest triads has already penetrated Chinatown presents a daunting challenge for American law enforcement. In the past, the Chinese community was always allowed to monitor itself. Only when gang violence spilled out into the street did police intervene, and even then charges were haphazardly pursued. To many, Chinatown's peculiar isolation stemmed from a tacit agreement between cops and the tongs, well known for their ability to grease a palm when necessary.

Leung says that "Sun Yee On wants to follow the Hong Kong style. You have to understand, Chinatown is not Hong Kong. They know they must move slow and make all the right contacts so they can place their people in power."

With few Asian cops or agents, American law enforcement is ill-equipped to deal with criminal developments in Chinatown. In their attempts to understand triad groups, many of which speak different dialects, police have to deal with a closed and distrustful Chinese community, the product of years of neglect.

Any Chinese citizen who is pondering whether or not to cooperate with low fan, as Caucasian police are sometimes disdainfully known, might want to consider the case of Steven Wong. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Chinatown, Wong infiltrated the United Bamboo, a powerful Taiwan-based triad, in 1985. Neither a cop nor a criminal in a bind, Wong was simply a citizen fed up with the stranglehold criminal groups had on legitimate businesspeople in Chinatown when he agreed to help in a police investigation.

"Every day I would read the Chinese newspaper," says Wong. "I see the problem. Kids dropping out of high school, being gunned down. We have ninety-nine percent of our population living in fear of the one percent who are bad."

Posing as a Chinese gangster with Mafia connections, Wong worked his way into the inner sanctum of the United Bamboo, a group with deep-rooted political connections in the Taiwanese government. Wearing a recording device strapped to the small of his back, he even recorded his initiation into the triad, the first time any such event had ever been taped by cops in the U.S.

With a lean, muscular physique and steely glare, Wong approached his undercover duties like a Method actor preparing for the role of a lifetime. Since he was a teenager, he had wanted to be a cop. Throughout the investigation, says Wong, agents and prosecutors constantly reassured him there would be a job for him in law enforcement when the case was over. "They tell me, 'Steven, you're a hero. We can use you.' "

By the time FBI agents made their arrests of 11 United Bamboo members, Wong had risked his life making heroin deals and even contracting to commit a murder. The case was tried in federal court using the RICO statutes. Wong was grilled on the witness stand by 11 defense attorneys, who accused him of being, among other things, a Communist agent and a lifelong gangster.

The trial resulted in the only conviction of a major triad group in U.S. history. Afterward, Wong inquired about his job. "They told me, 'Mr. Wong, you are not eligible for a police job because you are a member of a criminal organization.' " Wong was dumbfounded. He had joined the United Bamboo solely as part of the investigation.

Having testified against his fellow Chinese, Wong was ostracized in the community. The FBI told him there was a contract out on his life. He was offered relocation through the Witness Protection Program, which he refused, asking, "Why should I have to live my life in hiding, like a criminal?"

Today, Wong works in a restaurant outside New York. He rarely shows his face in the city before midnight; his memories of the United Bamboo case haunt him. "They never did let me be a part of the team," he says of the cops, agents and prosecutors he worked with. "They never trusted me because I was not one of them. To me, Chinatown was at stake. But they didn't care about anything except improving their careers."

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If Chinese organized crime were still only a Chinatown problem, American lawmen would not be sounding alarm bells. The fact that second- and third-generation Chinese-American criminals have branched out, however, is impossible to ignore. There was a time when Chinese heroin dealers made distribution arrangements only with Italians. Now, police sources say, the Chinese are willing to deal directly with Dominican and African-American groups, the primary street-level distributors of China white. The Mafia, no longer the feared presence it once was, has been relegated to a lesser role.

Far away from New York, in hill regions of the Golden Triangle, fields of poppies are in bloom. The plant's slender four-foot stems are topped with brilliant, multicolored petals and a core bulging with opium. DEA intelligence reports say that the last three years have produced record crops of raw opium sap, which is extracted and used as the base ingredient for heroin.

In many ways, the drug trade is just an example of the way the Hong Kong mob has always done business, and it is the base for the triads' international expansion. By exploiting their connections throughout the world, heroin brokers reap huge profits, which they in turn launder through Hong Kong banks or use to finance multimillion-dollar real-estate deals. "Some traffickers are quite well regarded," explains a Hong Kong investigator with triad expertise. "To them, heroin is just a commodity like sugar. You could put it on the stock exchange. These people don't have to look at users on the street in Washington, D.C., or New York. They aren't concerned with some poor black kid in Harlem. It's just a business, plain and simple."

Junkies all across America have reason to rejoice. Soon, the latest shipments of China white will be blanketing their neighborhoods. A new generation of heroin addicts is about to be born.

In the Marion Hotel, Africa cooks up a righteous batch. This time, he remembers to tie off. The needle is poised; a vein is bared. Down the hall, a junkie moans, his voice reverberating through an open window and out into the street.

Africa is asked if he ever wonders about the origins of his dope.

"Who gives a fuck?" he replies. The needle enters his vein with a pop.

The New Mob

Part Two in a series

" 'If I talk about triad business, my family will die. I will be killed by a tiger in the forest.' "