Big in China: Murder Villages and Scam Towns

In some rural areas, crime has become a cottage industry.
By Robert Foyle Hunwick

Many Chinese towns have grown fat off of single industries. 

Much of the world’s hosiery, for example, comes from the village of Datang, also known as “Sock City.” 

Songxia is dedicated to umbrellas. 

Jinjiang is all about zippers.
And Shisun, for a time, made a killing off of killing. 

Last year, Chinese prosecutors indicted 40 of the village’s residents for arranging 17 murders. 

At least 35 more deaths are under investigation; dozens more victims may never be known. 

News of Shisun’s killing ring provoked dismay in Hunan province, but not shock; similar gangs have been caught in Hebei, Henan, and Sichuan provinces. 

Indeed, the type of murder conspiracy seen in Shisun is so common that it has its own nickname: Mangjingshi Fanzui, after the film Mang Jing (“Blind Shaft”), which details a similar scheme. 

Like the movie’s characters, Shisun’s plotters killed migrant miners—staging each man’s death as a mining accident—then posed as grieving family members. 

Corrupt mine bosses in turn paid these impostor “families” hush money, rather than risk any investigation into working conditions. 

The scam was grisly but profitable—each death could net as much as $120,000, an unimaginable sum in a country where the average rural family’s annual income is $1,800. 

The new concrete houses that line the mud-brick village’s main street are a testament to the windfall.
Remote and difficult to access, many villages in China’s interior have developed a criminal cottage industry, involving anything from drugs to internet fraud to counterfeiting. (In fact, shanzhai, the slang for counterfeit, literally means “mountain village.”) 

In coastal Boshe, a village of 14,000 people, 20 percent of the population—including pensioners, police officers, and politicians—helped produce a third of China’s methamphetamine. 

Shutting down Boshe’s meth labs three years ago required 3,000 tactical officers backed by helicopters.

Many observers blame crime villages on the widening gap between China’s urbanized population and its left-behind agrarian one. 

Minimal policing, neglected infrastructure, and grinding poverty have isolated whole communities not just from society, but from traditional morality. 

Crime offers villagers a way to make a living, but beyond that, it provides essential revenue for cash-strapped local officials. 

In a report on “gangsterized” villages in Hunan province, Yu Jianrong, a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, writes that thugs are used to keep public order and collect taxes. 

In peasant communities, notes Feng Qingyang, a prominent blogger and social critic, clan loyalty to feudal chiefs supersedes deference to government authority. 

“People, rather than laws or government, rule,” he wrote on his blog. 

And when most of a village is implicated to some degree in a crime, notes Zheng Guihong, a Beijing-based political commentator, the prevailing view is that “the law cannot punish the majority.”
Authorities claim that poverty-relief efforts will consign crime villages to the past—provided local officials don’t embezzle the funds, of course. 

In the meantime, catching perpetrators is a game of Whac-a-Mole, with the criminals forever ahead of the cops. 

Rewards for crime are high, penalties are low, and living conditions are often dire. 

Tales of peasants who have prospered in the city inspire many to dream of overnight riches, according to Feng. 

But few can make a fortune without crime. 

The lucky strike gold alone; for others, it takes a village.

China's Fifth Column

Through reclusive Wa, China's reach extends into Suu Kyi's Myanmar

By Antoni Slodkowski and Yimou Lee | PANGSAN, MYANMAR

United Wa State Army (UWSA) soldiers march during a media display in Pansang, Wa territory in northeast Myanmar October 4, 2016. Picture taken on October 4, 2016.

Children leave school in Namtit, Wa territory in northeast Myanmar November 30, 2016. Picture taken on November 30, 

United Wa State Army (UWSA) soldiers march during a media display in Pansang, Wa territory in northeast Myanmar October 4, 2016. Picture taken on October 4, 2016. 

Ethnic Wa performer dressed as United Wa State Army (UWSA) soldiers perform a traditional dance in Mongmao, Wa territory in northeast Myanmar October 1, 2016. Picture taken on October 1, 2016. 

A teacher conducts a Chinese language lesson in a school in Namtit, Wa territory in northeast Myanmar November 30, 2016. Picture taken on November 30, 2016. 

China is extending its sway over an autonomous enclave run by Myanmar's most powerful ethnic armed group, sources in the region told Reuters, bolstering Beijing's role in the peace process that is the signature policy of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The "foreign policy" of the self-proclaimed Wa State is closely monitored by Beijing, senior officials in the administration run by the 30,000-strong United Wa State Army (UWSA) and its political wing said, with contact with Western governments, businesses or aid groups deemed particularly sensitive.
Official known to Myanmar as "Special Region 2", the remote territory is the size of Belgium and home to 600,000 people. 

Largely closed to Westerners for decades, it was visited by Reuters in October.
China's influence is quickly apparent, with street signs in Mandarin and Chinese businesses and banknotes ubiquitous in the self-proclaimed state's capital, Pangsan, and other Wa towns that straddle the rugged border.
"We share the same language and we marry each other," said the head of the Wa Foreign Affairs Office, Zhao Guo'an, when asked about the Chinese influence on Wa politics. 

"There's nothing we can do about it. We use Chinese currency, we speak Chinese and we wear and use products from China. Very little of that is from Myanmar."
Delve a little deeper, and it is apparent that China's reach extends much further than business and social ties.

EYES AND EARS
When Lo Yaku, the Wa agriculture minister, was asked about the drugs the statelet is accused of producing on an industrial scale, his secretary and a staffer from the official Wa News Bureau intervened to deflect the question. 

Both men are not Wa natives, but from China.
"This question was answered yesterday," said I Feng, a news bureau reporter originally from western China.
"After the drug eradication campaign, our government encouraged agencies, individuals and Chinese investors to participate in anti-drug activities," said the minister's secretary, Chen Chun, originally from Zhejiang province on China's faraway east coast.
A similar scene played out repeatedly during Reuters' visit -- the first by a major international news organization -- questions on topics ranging from military funding to methamphetamine were mostly fielded not by the Wa minister but by an accompanying Chinese minder.
These and other Chinese citizens Reuters found working in the administration in Pangsan said they were employees of the Wa government and "did not work" for the authorities in Beijing.
But their presence hints at just how closely entwined the Wa State and its leaders are with their giant neighbor.
"China has its ears and eyes everywhere, including in the government and business, and is wary of any deepening of ties with the West," said one minister from the Wa government, speaking on condition of anonymity due the sensitivity of the matter.
"We take this very seriously, and act so as not to anger China," he said, adding that all dealings with Washington and Brussels, as well as every foreigner or NGO entering Wa territory, were scrupulously reported to China.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in response to a question from Reuters that "as a friendly neighbor" it has "consistently respected Myanmar's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and not interfered with Myanmar's internal affairs".

OPENING UP
The Wa State was formed in 1989, when the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) disintegrated into ethnic armies, and has been run as an autonomous region by the UWSA beyond the authority of the central Myanmar government since.
The rare invitation to a small group of foreign journalists to visit -- made at Beijing's urging according to two ministers from the Wa government -- appears to be part of a charm offensive aimed at the new civilian government led by democracy champion Suu Kyi.
Reaching an accord with the Wa and other rebels is one of Suu Kyi's biggest challenges as she grapples with the interlocking issues of ending decades of ethnic conflict and tackling drug production in Myanmar's lawless border regions.
While it has not fought the Myanmar army in years, the USWA -- whose leaders deny allegations from the United States and others that it is a major producer of methamphetamine -- has so far declined to actively participate in Suu Kyi's peace process.
"It's a good timing for us to open up. There's a new political reality in Myanmar, so it's good to engage in the political dialogue and open up to the outside world," said Nyi Rang, a Wa government official.
China also has its own interests in play, according to analysts.
Beijing hopes Suu Kyi will restart a blocked, Chinese-financed mega-dam project, and wants to protect its extensive mineral interests in the country after the removal of U.S. sanctions has opened it up to Western competitors.
"China is playing a complex game in Myanmar aimed at safeguarding and extending its considerable economic, commercial and strategic interests while at the same time deterring any encroachment by Western or Japanese interests along its southwestern border," said Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based analyst for security consulting firm IHS-Jane's.
"In this carrot-and-stick game the UWSA is unquestionably the biggest stick Beijing wields -- plausibly deniable diplomatically, hugely influential as a strategic rear-base for allied ethnic factions, and itself far too powerful to be taken down militarily."

WEAPONS SALES
The Wa mini-state relies heavily on China as a market for its exports of rubber and metals such as tin.
As well as occupying government posts, Chinese citizens, mainly from neighboring Yunnan province, dominate local markets and the Wa elite send their children to Chinese schools and elderly to its hospitals.
"We don't make anything here. The stuff we eat, we wear and we use is all from China," said Chu Chin Hung, district office chief in the Wa border town of Nan Tit. 

"Every Saturday morning there is a farmers' market, but almost all of the vendors are from China."
Experts such as IHS-Jane's Defence Weekly have previously reported that China has sold a variety of weapons to the Wa. 

For the first time, a Wa minister, who declined to be identified, confirmed some of those reports and described the process.
"The Wa State has bought military trucks directly from China and light weapons from China indirectly through Laos," said the minister. 

"Those weapons include rifles and cannons. They don't want to anger Myanmar by selling directly."
The Chinese Defence Ministry denied selling weapons to the Wa.
"China has consistently and strictly adhered to a military equipment export policy that benefits the recipient country's present defense needs, does not harm regional or world peace, security and stability, and that does not interfere in the internal affairs of the recipient country," it said in a statement to Reuters.

Trump push to combat drug trade means starting with China, not Mexico

By Andrew O'Reilly 

If President Trump wants to fulfill his campaign promise of stemming the flow of drugs coming across the United States’ border with Mexico, he may want to start by looking at China.
Manufacturers and organized crime groups in the world’s most populous country are responsible for the majority of fentanyl -- the synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin -- that ends up in the U.S. and the majority of precursor chemicals used by Mexican drug cartels to make methamphetamine, according to numerous published U.S. government reports.
“The Mexican cartels are buying large quantities of fentanyl from China,” Barbara Carreno, a spokesperson with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), told FoxNews.com. 

“It’s much easier to produce than waiting around to grow poppies for heroin and it’s incredibly profitable.
The DEA estimates that a kilogram of fentanyl, which sells for between $2,500 and $5,000 in China, can be sold to wholesale drug dealers in the U.S. for as much as $1.5 million and that the demand for the drug due to the prescription opioid crisis in places like New England and the Midwest have kept the prices high.

What is fentanyl

• Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, 50 times more potent than heroin, that's responsible for a recent surge in overdose deaths in some parts of the country. It also has legitimate medical uses.
• Doctors prescribe fentanyl for cancer patients with tolerance to other narcotics, because of the risk of abuse, overdose and addiction, the Food and Drug Administration imposes tight restrictions on fentanyl; it is classified as a Schedule II controlled substance.
• The DEA issued a nationwide alert about fentanyl overdose in March 2015. More than 700 fentanyl-related overdose deaths were reported to the DEA in late 2013 and 2014. Since many coroners and state crime labs don't routinely test for fentanyl, the actual number of overdoses is probably much higher.

Trump, along with numerous other presidential hopefuls, promised while on the stump in states hard-hit by drug addiction to quickly tackle the widespread use of drugs like fentanyl and heroin. 

While heroin addiction has been a concern for decades, in recent years the number of users of heroin and fentanyl -- and its more potent derivatives like carfentanil -- has skyrocketed as the government clamps down on the abuse of prescription opioids like OxyContin and Percocet.
"We're going to build that wall and we're going to stop that heroin from pouring in and we're going to stop the poison of the youth," Trump said during a September campaign stop in New Hampshire.
The problem with cracking down on fentanyl and its derivatives is that while these substances may be banned in the U.S., they may not be illegal in their country of origin. 

China, for example, only last year added 116 synthetic drugs to its controlled substances list, but failed to include carfentanil – a drug that is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and has been researched as a chemical weapon by the U.S., U.K., Russia, Israel, China, the Czech Republic and India.
“It can kill you if just a few grains gets absorbed through the skin,” Carreno said.
While Mexican cartels obtain these substances in large quantities through the murky backwaters of the Chinese black market, anybody with a credit card and Internet access can call one of the numerous companies in China’s freewheeling pharmaceutical industry that manufactures fentanyl and its more potent cousins.
Earlier this year, The Associated Press found at least 12 Chinese businesses that said they would export carfentanil to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium and Australia for as little as $2,750 a kilogram.
Besides synthetic opioids, Chinese companies are also producing massive amounts of the precursor chemicals used to make methamphetamine.
As the methamphetamine industry evolved over the last decade or so from small, homegrown operations in the U.S. to the super-labs run by Mexican cartels, cooks and producers of the drug have begun to rely more and more on China for their ingredients. 

Mexico now supplies 90 percent of the methamphetamine found in the U.S., and 80 percent of precursor chemicals used in Mexican meth come from China, according to a study by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
“China is the major source for precursor chemicals going to Mexico,” David Shirk, a global fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told FoxNews.com. 

“The problem is finding who the connection is between organized crime groups in China and organized crime groups in Mexico.”
Shirk added that law enforcement and drug war experts generally have a good picture of the major players in Mexican organized crime, but the Chinese underworld is less well mapped and it is more difficult to pin down the major players in the drug trade there.
Despite U.S. efforts to crackdown on both the fentanyl and methamphetamine trades, U.S. government officials acknowledge that much of the onus lies with the Chinese. 

A U.S. State Department report found that drug-related corruption among local and lower-level Chinese officials continues to be a concern.
When he takes office in January, Trump has a few things working in his favor in respect to combatting the drug trade.
One is the continued fracturing of some of Mexico’s largest and most powerful drug cartels. 

The Sinaloa Cartel, for example, was seen for years as an impenetrable drug organization until cracks began to appear in its armor following the re-arrest earlier this year of its leader, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and the power struggle that ensued.
“When the violence goes up, business always goes down,” Shirk said.

A childlike nation of maids and banana sellers: How Chinese see the Philippines

By Echo Huang Yinyin

Rodrigo Duterte is planning his first official visit to China. It promises to be a pivotal moment in Sino-Philippine relations.

Just three months ago the two countries were experiencing “the most toxic bilateral relationship… but now they are suddenly new best friends,” Richard Heydarian, an assistant professor in politics at De La Salle University in the Philippines, told Quartz. 
Manila was Beijing’s chief antagonist in the South China Sea, and lodged the complaint that led to a scathing international tribunal decision on China’s activities there.
But after Duterte issued a string of insults against US president Barack Obama, the Philippines foreign affairs secretary said on Oct. 5 that the country would “realign” its foreign policy, “breaking away from the shackling dependency of the Philippines” on the US.
The island nation’s new alignment will include closer ties with China and Russia, Duterte has indicated, and he promised to talk about buying defense assets from the two.
Manila’s about-face is more than just a diplomatic victory for Beijing—it also affirms in many Chinese people’s minds their long-held view of the Philippines as a weak, inferior country that should respect China, the regional superpower.
As Duterte moves to embrace Beijing, racial slurs based on the Philippines’ tropical fruit exports and its status as a major exporter of cheap labor remain commonplace in China.

Easily manipulated banana sellers
It is evident from Beijing’s characterization of the South China Sea dispute that it does not think the Philippines is capable of acting in its own diplomatic capacity.
In one editorial published (link in Chinese) by state news agency Xinhua in May, Manila is said to be simply acting out a script that is “directed” by the US, with other countries including Japan acting as “cheerleaders” in the background.
Chinese state media also rolled out a “US expert” from the little-known “Executive Intelligence Review” to bolster its argument that the Philippines is merely America’s pawn.
China’s disdain for the Philippines as a pliable bit-actor in Asia is amplified by a widespread view that the country is an impoverished, tropical country which depends on China to buy its bananas.
“I just told my father about the international tribunal ruling result over the South China Sea, and my father asked me, ‘Philippines? That banana seller?” wrote self-claimed Chinese writer Wu Yan (link in Chinese, registration required), who has over 14.9 million followers, on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.
Others shared cartoons depicting the Philippines as a child, upset and remorseful that its actions have affected China’s appetite for its bananas and mangos.

1: “What? China isn’t buying our bananas?” 2: “And they’re not buying our mangoes?” 3: “Oh father, I was wrong.”

One popular cartoon circulated after the international tribunal decision (which has since been removed from Weibo) shows a cartoon “China” smacking a crying “Philippines” with the caption “How dare you! A banana seller dares to rob the South China Sea from your father!”
China has used fruit as leverage against the Philippines in the past.
In June 2012, China imposed restrictions on banana imports from the Philippines following a standoff between the two countries over the Scarborough Shoals in the South China Sea that year, citing concerns over pests.
“When the Chinese get really angry about the Filipinos, they stop buying bananas,” said David Zweig, chair professor of social sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The Philippines exported 160,000 tons of bananas (pdf, p.12) to China in 2014, according to the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association, a significant drop from 2011’s 310,000 tons.
In March this year, China destroyed 35 tons of Filipino bananas worth $33,000, claiming that the bananas had high levels of pesticide residues.
Ahead of Duterte’s visit, 27 blacklisted fruit exporters will be allowed to sell to China again as a “gift.”

The help
The other image that comes to mind when many Chinese people think of the Philippines is its large number of domestic helpers who work in homes in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.


Domestic helpers protest in Hong Kong after a local lawmaker, Regina Ip, made a racial slur against Filipinos, on April 23, 2015.

In Hong Kong, Filipina domestic helpers are referred to in Cantonese as “bun mui,” taken from the words for “Philippines” and “younger sister” or “girl.”
Its usage implies someone who is a low-cost servant, said Daisy Tam from Hong Kong Baptist University’s cultural studies department.
“Some Filipino domestic helpers are treated as second-class citizens.”
That impression of Filipinas is at a young age.
30-year-old Hongkonger Nicole Tsui told Quartz, “I think of ‘maids’ when talking about Filipinos.”
Tsui’s family had employed several domestic helpers in the past 20 years.
Tsui added the family’s helpers “were just like sisters.”

They are however, paid less than local workers.
Domestic helpers from the Philippines are paid a base rate of HK$4,110 ($530) a month, below the city’s minimum wage for residents, and by law are required to stay in the same house as their employers.
In recent weeks, some Chinese netizens mocked Filipinos for their low-cost labor image.
“Duterte ordered the US to leave the nation’s military base, but the US refused to do so. It looks like the Filipino maids just invited a wolf who refuses to leave the Philippines,” wrote (link in Chinese, registration required) one Weibo user on Sept.14.
“The three biggest Filipino exports are maids, maids, maids,” AnotherWeibo user (link in Chinese, registration required) based in Thailand wrote on Aug.16.
“They can’t be trusted.”

What Chinese drugs?
As Duterte’s brutal war against drugs in the Philippines continues, he’s been open about where he thinks these drugs, especially “shabu” or methamphetamine, are coming from—China.
It’s an accusation that’s backed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and US drug enforcement, which say Chinese laboratories are a major source for precursor chemicals of meth:

UNODC’s data on methamphetamine traffic in the 2016 annual report.

But in a sign of how little Beijing takes Duterte’s accusations, and his war on drugs, seriously, Chinese state newspapers have mostly not even reported the remarks, and an official denied any link this summer.
Instead, some Chinese citizens and one state-backed paper are also criticizing Duterte’s human rights violations’ since he started his war on drugs.