The New Mafia

Hole of Justice

By Peter G. Jimenea

The New Mafia

Hong Kong, is Britain’s colony for hundreds of years. China’s Ch’ing dynasty ceded it to the British as war reparation after the poorly-equipped Chinese army lost the battle dubbed as “the Opium Wars” against the powerful British fleet at the Canton dock in 1859.

As written in the book Warlord of Crime, Hong Kong slowly became a big city where money is god. Vices developed in the colony lorded by different Chinese Triad gangs competing for supremacy in underworld business. Few have the faintest idea that the backbone of the Triads organization is drug.

During the 1800s, the European powers financed their colonial ambitions through the opium trade. The British who had established a government monopoly over the large poppy tracts in Northern India led the drive. They targeted China’s million of inhabitants as the principla market.

Britain mass-merchandised opium and became the first Western government to traffic in narcotics. It took the pervasive bureaucracy and persistent of the British to transform China into a nation of addicts to become the largest organized drug trafficker in history.

During the late 1800s, a new wave of colonialism took place. Europe divided the world into colonies, protectorates and spheres of influence. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia became French Indochina. Burma (now Myanmar) became British Burma, Thailand a British sphere of influence and a buffer separating the British and French empires.

Opium addiction then spread from China to Southeast Asia that between 1940 and 1955 a lot of Chinese residents in downtown Iloilo City were seen smoking opium. It spread to Europe and United States that by 1906, a worldwide anti-opium crusade was formed. In Britain, the House of Commons declared their government’s involvement immoral.

The British did not ban opium in Hong Kong until 1946, the House of Commons’ vote marked the end of its government control of the trade.  But China remained a nation of addicts. Opium was in grained into Chinese life. It is a social grace for the wealthy and a means of escape for the masses.

In 1911, a revolution overthrown the Imperial government and a republic was born under the leadership shared by Dr. Sun yat sen and Chinese Army Gen. Chiang kai shek. Their new government has worsened the problem. China ceased to be a unified country.

Autonomous regions are controlled by powerful military warlords. Having been riddled by corruption, the weak republican government failed to provide enforcement, thus, poppy cultivation and opium exports increased rapidly.

In Southeast Asia, the British and French opium monopolies created massive addict populations crucial to the post-World War II heroin epidemic. Britain successfully ingrained opium into China that Chinese merchants were the natural choice to run the monopoly of the trade in Southeast Asia.

In Thailand, the Britons forced the Thais to accept Chinese control of all underground vices. But like Burma, only Chinese are allowed to direct the opium trade. Now, should one still wonder today why Chinese nationals are as always, the “big catch” in government’s campaign against illegal drugs?