Printed: 9/24/2015 10:10 AM 32044127760270 1.1~~~II~m~~~~mml HARVARD LIBRARY Borrower: HLS Call #: WID HD HV6441 .G54 2008 Lending String: HUL Location: WID Patron: Cole, Richard ODYSSEY ENABLED Journal Title: McMafia :a journey through the global criminal underworld /Misha Glenny. Charge Maxcost: _ Volume: Issue: Billing Category: Exempt Month/Year: NA Pages: 313-342 Borrowing Library: Harvard College Library ~ - Article Author: (1)== Email: [email protected] .=: Article Title: "The Future of Organised Crime" Notes: Thankyou. --=(1) _ Q Imprint: Via Scan and Deliver Service Transaction Date:9/24/2015 10:0034 AM OCLC In Process Date: ~ 0 Special Instructions: c: ~ Title/Verso Page(s) S & D Processing Notes: ~ ~ Thankyou. U CO c.n ~"" ILL Number: 4582808 ~ 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 -e o Not as cited ....t'll ....J o Duplicate ....J - o Multiple articles o Exceeds 10% of work o Not on shelf o On Reserve o Too fragile o Checked out/on hold o Exceeds 100 pages Initials: _ ____________ J CHAPTER 14 The Future of Organized Crime nother sip of delicate green tea. Another pause. Then another whis- pered explanation. "Behind Chen Kai there was a shadow. A dark A shadow. This is an invisible force, a dark force here in Fuzhou, and it did not operate behind Chen Kai alone. You only see the shadow when it strikes-then it is too late:' Talking in metaphors is central to the experience of China. The invisi- ble shadow conjured up by a cautious businessman in Fuzhou catches the sense of unease that is common to all police states. Unlike most police states, however, China has made room for a rampant culture of conspicu- ous consumption that obscures the presence of the shadow. As "the richest man in Fuzhou," Chen Kai had sophisticated instruments for tracking the capricious moods of the shadow, and so perhaps he had less to fear than most. Until his arrest on May 16, 2003, he was on top of the world. Good- looking, tall, and in his early forties, he sported a diamond-encrusted watch. And Chen could survey the capital of Fujian Province from atop his glitzy Music Plaza, or from the penthouse suite at his luxury apartment development, Triumphant Garden, the most expensive real estate in the city. Or indeed from anyone of the other hotels, restaurants, and housing estates he owned. A few months earlier, Chen had welcomed Song Zuying in person when she performed at the Plaza. China's most glamorous singing star and a Grammy nominee, Song had followed the path already traveled by many of the country's glitterati to the Plaza's stage door. Chen's generosity was fabled-he was happy to shell out up to 200,000 renminbi ($26,000) for a half-hour performance. And the Music Plaza was the place to be seen. 313 McMAFIA As in many parts of China, the money and celebrity also attracted the distinctive blacked-out cars with a "K" or an "0" registration, denoting senior party and security officials, respectively. The chief of police and other big shots would regularly join in an evening of gambling, supple- mented by bottles of vintage mao- tai liquor and Hennessy XO champagne cognac, served by some of the joint's 200 hostesses. Nobody from Chen's village in nearby Minhou County could have dreamed that his career might develop so spectacularly. Born just after the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong's murderous program of agricultural reform, Chen grew up during the Cultural Revolution, a living nightmare for most of China, characterized by fear, intimidation, starvation, and butchery. From 1959to 1976,hundreds of millions of Chinese shared a sin- gle goal-survival. Tens of millions didn't make it or were so damaged by the state-inflicted violence that their lives were barely worth living. This was especially so in Chen's poor community in Fujian. Mao Zedong sus- pected this backward province of harboring all manner of class traitors and counterrevolutionaries, and so for two decades he neglected the region as a punishment for suspected thought crimes and recidivist bourgeois habits. Perhaps it was to compensate for Mao's vindictive behavior that China's great reformer, Deng Xiaoping, chose the city of Xiamen in south- ern Fujian as one of the first special economic zones (SEZs) in the early 1980s to inspire local entrepreneurs in thawing out the economy that had been frozen solid by the Maoist ice age. Agog at the success of the Xiamen experiment, it wasn't long before Fuzhou's local bosses opened up the provincial capital as well. Deng did not confer the honor on Fujian by chance-80 percent of Taiwan's people trace their roots back to Fujian. By opening up this province, Deng hoped to attract huge investment from Taiwan to the mainland. And he was proved right. Chen's peasant father took advantage of the new opportunities. "He started his own business, transporting goods into Fuzhou from the sur- rounding countryside with a hand-pulled cart," said Mr. Jiang as he took a tea break at a small tile shop, Wild Goose Ceramics. By the standards of the time, Mr. Jiang observed with a smile, this made him a master entrepre- neur, the equivalent of a Harvard MBA. We drank our tea in small gulps and stared at the huge blue mansion, now empty, that Chen had built for his mother and father. Although he's still alive-probably-Chen's ghost already stalks all Fuzhou. Chen graduated from his father's laborious trade of hauling vegetables and such to selling carpets door to door. He accumulated enough capital to rent a shop, where he sold electronic goods. This was in itself revolution- 314 The Future of Organized Crime ary. In the early eighties, the state still told most Chinese what profession they would pursue and at what location. Choice was both precious and rare. Generally life was unutterably boring. "There was nothing-nothing to buy, nothing to do at the time;' said the photographer and businessman Wan Sui. "Shops selling anything but the most basic goods barely existed, and so Chen stood out." Traditionally, Fuzhou boasted a bigger selection of consumer goods than almost any other part of China. In the 1980s, it was the only place you could buy blue jeans, for example, and people would come to this province from all over the country for a pair. The reason for Fuzhou's relative diversity was one of the many reasons Chairman Mao so despised its people. A hundred miles from the port of Fuzhou lies Taiwan, the Nationalist thorn in Communist China's flesh. If Taiwanese smugglers made it across the small stretch of water to the mainland, they landed in Fujian. Apart from proximity, Fujian Province and Taiwan are linked by language-they speak the same dialect, and even those who hail from Shanghai or Beijing must strain to understand a single word the Fujianese are saying. Days after Deng announced his cautious economic reforms twenty-five years ago, dozens of fishing boats from Taiwan and Fujian were meeting in the sea halfway between the territories to exchange money for cassette recorders, which were then sold by men such as Chen. And his experience in electronic goods led to his first big break-securing the exclusive con- cession to sell Hitachi color televisions in Fuzhou. These were the first color TV s to hit China, and the concession opened the door to consider- able wealth. In the early 1990S,a shy young man, Xu Li, took a shine to one of Chen's girlfriends. Despite his charisma, Chen was rarely seen with a trophy on his arm, and he magnanimously acceded to Li's request to start dating the girl. Soon after, Li introduced Chen to his father-Xu Congrong. Xu grew very fond of Chen and before long he had pronounced himself Chen's god- father. A blessed embrace for Chen, it turned out, as Xu Congrong was the chief of Fuzhou's Public Security Bureau. The marriage of Chen's restless entrepreneurial spirit to Xu's power as the province's most senior law enforcement officer was happy and fruitful. It spawned one of a new breed-the Political Criminal Nexus (PCN), a profoundly corrupt rela- tionship between the local tycoons and party leaders. The Chinese govern- ment has watched perplexed as these mischievous offspring grow across the country. Beijing feels threatened by the PCN, "mainly because it is eroding the authority of the Chinese Communist Party," as Ko-lin Chin, America's foremost expert on Chinese organized crime, has argued. "In 315 McMAFIA other words, for the Chinese government, the PCN is first a political issue and second a criminal justice issue;' But it is also a matter of economics-the PCNs create a lot of wealth, and in Fuzhou the golden years began. Under Xu's protection, Chen Kai started importing slot machines into his clubs. Gambling is strictly illegal in China (with the jaw-dropping exception of the former Portuguese colony of Macao). Except under Mao, however, that has never stopped most Chinese from indulging in the habit with an industrial zeal. As the gamblers of Fuzhou fed the machines, the coins fell out the other end into Chen's pockets. In November 1997, Gu Wei, a reporter with the newspaper Fuzhou Evening, published the only story ever written on the trade. It was intended as the first in a series, but after a gunman fired shots into Mr. Gu's front room, he chose discretion over valor and dropped his interest in the subject.