Abstract
The Introduction explains the rationale for studying the Big Circle Boys (BCB). It discusses the existing research gap where few studies have examined the oft-cited ‘new criminal entrepreneurs,’ particularly Asian ones, that have replaced traditional organised crime since the 1980s. The BCB is the most representative of these which no researcher has examined. They are defined as career/professional criminals who moved abroad from Guangzhou, China, and have at one point held illegal immigrant status and have been a refugee claimant. The sources and methodology are discussed in some detail (interview and documentation; qualitative analysis) as organised crime studies are difficult to conduct and data is hard to acquire, so that the reader can get a glimpse into the fieldwork and data analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
See Gambetta (1993: 100–102).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
The UK is an exception, where the term ‘Asian’ is widely taken to mean peoples of South Asian descent—for instance, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Therefore, when the term ‘Asian’ is used in reference to organised crime in the UK, the ethnic connotation differs from other Western countries where it implies Asian peoples of the Far East and South East descent: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, and others.
- 5.
See Leiva and Bright (2015) for the ‘mafia myth,’ where they examined whether there exists an emphasis on ‘mono-ethnic criminal organisations’ by the Australian media in the representation of ethnicity in organised crime (including Chinese criminal organisations).
- 6.
Reuter (1995) argues that one of the reasons for the mafia’s decline lies in their incompetence. The practice of recruitment from among the uneducated, hard-core felons only attracts those that are capable of committing violence, thus producing less criminally brilliant minds out of a shrinking pool of candidates. At the same time, older leaders are losing their edge due to the need to keep up with technological advancement in order to carry out operations that involve such sophistication. Compared to their Asian criminal counterparts, they are out-competed in the drug business due to their inability to obtain high-quality drugs at a low price, to monitor and territorialise ports of entry, and to be the sole proprietor of the use of violence.
- 7.
Many studies that make the assertion that ethnic-Chinese drug trafficking networks are comprised of non-professional criminals rather than career criminals for the following reasons: they rely on data from Asian countries rather than Western countries (e.g. Chin and Zhang 2015; Huang et al. 2010); the observations are based on individual media reportings rather than longitudinal insights over several years; or the claims have little empirical basis.
- 8.
For a detailed discussion on the analytical criteria that can be used to differentiate between career and non-career criminals, see Blumstein et al. (1986).
- 9.
The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC) Annual Report ceased to address the BCB as well as a number of other criminal organisations by name after 2002.
- 10.
- 11.
O1, O2, I1, and I2 are not included in the List of Respondents in the Bibliography because they were not interviewed. The professional backgrounds of O1 and O2 are given in the main text. Note also that I1 and I2 only appear in Volume II.
- 12.
A number of BCB cases were noted to have taken place in Australia since the 1990s. However, those cases appeared to carry an overtone of youth gang sporadic violence, which were significantly different from the more ‘calculated’ and business-oriented way the Canadian BCB conducted themselves. For practical reasons, Australian cases were not considered due to the infeasibility of obtaining usable, first-hand data without visiting in person.
- 13.
Natarajan and Belanger (1998) used a similar method to search and build their sample using Westlaw database where they extracted information from federal cases that ended with conviction involving multi-kilo drug trafficking in New York City.
- 14.
A similar effort was made to ascertain their existence in San Francisco, the US. This was initiated after coming across a news article in relation to a local BCB case, and a personal referral to an officer of the San Francisco Police Department. The result, however, turned out to be negative (R11 2008).
- 15.
Between April and May 2008, I took a trip to Hong Kong and Guangzhou. In Hong Kong, I conducted an interview with Dr Chu Yiu Kong, the author of The Triads as Business (2000), an in-depth study of the triads in Hong Kong. He recommended and referred other experts on organised crime and the BCB topic, as well as shared his views and recollections on how the BCB had impacted the underworld and the law enforcement agencies in Hong Kong throughout the 1970s and 1980s. While in Guangzhou, I visited the Zhong Shan Library (now known as the Municipal Guangzhou Library) to locate materials related to the BCB, organised crime, and the Guangzhou factions of the ‘Red Guard’ during the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR).
- 16.
Desroches (2007) alludes to the uncooperative nature of law enforcement and intelligence agencies as another reason.
- 17.
Incidentally in some cases, their criminality started back in Guangzhou, but this is not a defining criterion as such information is not always available.
- 18.
The BCB speak the Cantonese dialect. Cantonese as spoken by people from Guangzhou is phonetically similar to the same dialect spoken by people from Hong Kong, yet distinguishable by slight differences in accent. This is to be discussed in Chapter 3. The author’s ability to speak fluent Cantonese was instrumental in carrying out the fieldwork. This includes both the ability to identify, correct, and translate Cantonese names from official documents, as well as liaising with Cantonese-speaking individuals and conducting formal interviews.
- 19.
An example of such exclusion is the case of a Fujian ‘BCB’ worker from the mid-1990s, one of the most sensationalised ‘BCB-related’ murders (of his BCB boss’ infant child) which caused a media frenzy. Although labelled as a BCB himself, as his boss Wong Yuk Ming was a known BCB heroin importer from Guangzhou, the Fujian BCB worker was actually a lower-level worker from Fujian, China (IRB 2004: Fujian BCB worker).
- 20.
One of the most probable ways of meeting an offender for the purpose of academic research is through the penal system. However, despite several requests made to Correctional Service Canada to gain access to a list of named BCB offenders in prisons throughout the Ontario region (includes Toronto) and Pacific Region (includes Vancouver), access was unfortunately denied.
- 21.
One of the most positive catalysts which helped initiate the fieldwork momentum was when a list of named BCB and investigative projects was provided by a senior law enforcement officer in British Columbia.
- 22.
In relation to academic research, Antonopoulos (2013) states that topics related to the Eastern culture often rely on the ability to understand and use guanxi in addition to one’s linguistic skills. This applies to research on both legitimate and illicit aspects, and it is true for studies undertaken both in China and within overseas Chinese communities. The utility of guanxi—or simply relationship and contacts—in this study cannot be considered unique by any means. For examples, see the fieldwork process of two studies on corruption and guanxi by Wang (2013b) and Wang et al. (2014).
- 23.
As a prominent concept among the Chinese people, the practice of guanxi can be found within all facets of social interactions. However, this study takes the position that distinctions between different settings in which guanxi is used should be made, which is detailed in Volume II. In particular, the relationship aspect of guanxi, despite being only one strand of subset notions within the broader concept of guanxi, has many cross-cultural analogues—and should, therefore, be unpacked and specified as relationship wherever possible rather than to shroud it under the umbrella of guanxi.
- 24.
Although meetings arranged through primary intermediaries included providing participants with all relevant information regarding the study, participants still often go ‘off script’ to discuss topics or introduce others who may not add value to the study.
- 25.
Notwithstanding the exclusion of the many anecdotes and personal experiences or opinions regarding the BCB from interviews with anonymous participants, these meetings have proved fruitful in at least two ways. They provided invaluable introductions to individuals who would otherwise not have been accessible, such as a number of former and current law enforcement officers who were willing to discuss the BCB off the record. In the formative stages of the fieldwork in Canada, informal meetings of the kind were extremely useful for the purpose of corroborating ongoing findings from both court material and formal interviews. This applies to informal discussions with both law enforcement circles and the Asian business or social community. So, even when the information is deemed inappropriate to be incorporated into the books, the totality of the varying sources and angles of information helped greatly at the time to ensure that the research was embarking upon the right path.
- 26.
Some of the most important BCB cases (police investigative Project Luen Hop, for instance), which could have been valuable to this study, were unavailable through Freedom of Information requests made to the Court of Ontario.
- 27.
The subsequent section expands on how portions of official data were determined to be relevant or irrelevant.
- 28.
This rough estimation excludes a number of files acquired but not used in the book. Among other less useful files, a master’s thesis by Jamieson (2002) contains numerous insightful case studies on counterfeit credit card offences (the other dominant BCB activity apart from drugs) committed by various named BCB, including Ze Wai, Kwok Yung, and Kwok Keung. More than 5000 pages (some parts are irrelevant) of material on a number of BCB individuals have also been order-purchased from the IRB.
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Chung, A. (2019). Introduction. In: Chinese Criminal Entrepreneurs in Canada, Volume I. Transnational Crime, Crime Control and Security. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05132-7_1
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