OPINION> Zhu Yuan
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OPINION> Zhu Yuan
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Book sheds light on growth of mafia
By Zhu Yuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-05 07:52
The very popular book Once Upon a Time in Northeast China, Underworld Stories in 20 Years traces the development of a particular Chinese gang from a small group of gangsters into a mafia in the real sense. Such a story reminds me of the greenwoods outlaws in ancient China being described in numerous fictions. If there is anything in common between ancient outlaws and their modern counterparts, it is the way they regard reality as a natural state, in which they solve their own problems in their own way rather than with the aid of rules and conventions. This phenomenon is the remains of jungle law from the old times when the human being as a whole was in a natural state. As British political philosopher Thomas Hobbes described, no one would feel safe in such a state. Only then can whoever is stronger prevails. The irony is that they were called outlaws because they never observed established legal codes in whatever they did, but they did have their own rules. They called them rules in the rivers and lakes (jianghu guiju). We had many novels describing such outlaws. One of the most well known was the Outlaws of the Marsh. Almost all Chinese fiction of this kind extols heroes of chivalry and justice, which actually conveys people's ideal and belief that justice will finally prevail against social evil. In past several hundred years, until early last century when most people could not read, listening to such tales told by professional storytellers was a popular pastime. In the cliff-hanging plots, killing of villains by chivalrous heroes was a psychological satisfaction listeners tended to seek. Nevertheless, very few outlaws were as good as their fictional counterparts because they must have a cruel heart to kill whoever stood in their way of becoming ringleader, if they intended to maintain a living by being an outlaw. The way quite a number of ringleaders of local gangs earned their names in the middle of the 1970s testifies to this truth. They had to be audacious enough to fight their way through various gang fights and prove themselves to be the cruelest, most fearless and cold-blooded. Then other scoundrels or thugs would gather around them for shelter and then they became gang leaders. Organized crimes were seldom heard of before the cultural revolution (1966-76). There were scoundrels, rapists or murderers but seldom mafia-like criminal organizations. They first appeared in the middle of the cultural revolution, when political persecution of government leaders at all levels plunged China into a great turmoil. As this book describes, what these gang leaders wanted at the beginning was just a name among their men, the name of being a guy of chivalry and courage, who could sacrifice even his life for his friends. With such a name, he would be held in reverence. There were indeed some very bad ones among them who would blackmail pickpockets or pester some pretty girls. But they were no other than ruffians. Yet, when market economy started to prevail in the early 1990s and materialistic temptations had never been so strong for them not to get involved, the nature of such gangs changed. They found that their names were a kind of resource that they could make good use of in obtaining illegal gains. And, so could the thugs around them. These gangs turned to become mafia-like. If they, as gangs, only disrupted social order before, now as mafia, they have become malignant tumors in the social fabric and seriously affected the normal functioning of a society. In a special campaign, the police have cracked more than 1,000 underworld organizations nationwide in the past three years and arrested more than 8,000 people suspected of getting involved in organized crimes. Even the central authorities admit in documents that organized crime will be a serious social problem in the years to come, and great effort will have to be made to crack down on them. This book sheds some light on the root causes for organized crime becoming rampant. E-mail: zhuyuan@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily 08/05/2009 page8) |
