The Triads: The Growing Global Threat from the Chinese Criminal Societies

by Martin Booth

Discusses the secret Chinese Triad societies, ancient organized criminal groups that are now entrenched in North America and that pose a greater threat than the Mafia or the Colombian drug cartels

Genres: Nonfiction, China, Crime, True Crime

215 pages, Hardcover

First published November 9, 1989

About the author

Martin Booth was a prolific English novelist and poet. He also worked as a teacher and screenwriter, and was the founder of the Sceptre Press.

Reviews

[Brett C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martin Booth did a great job of exploring the concept of the Triad. This criminal organization acts and operates as fraternity—steeped in Chinese history, mythology, and legend whose roots lie over two thousand years deep in the soil of Chinese culture. While the Mafia is family-based and ridden with long-drawn-out vendettas, the Triad is a transnational network enterprise born out of reaction to invasion and conquest of outside forces. Booth explained the rich history of China black to the Han Dynasty through the Ch'ing and Ming Dynasties through Imperial China and through recent history. The Triad originated the Hung Society, a secret fraternal organization with ritual (taken from Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism), with lodges for meetings, leaders and an hierarchy of power. Initiation rituals were complex rites involving dress code, verbalized sayings, and performances; Triad members had secrets hand signs, code phrases, signs and seals all with symbolic significance.




The Triads' transition from patriotic secret society to an international crime network in Hong Kong. This started in the 1800s under colonial British rule. The events of the Triad membership prohibited by British-Chinese authorities (1845), the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), and establishment of the Republic of China (1912) forced the Triads to operate underground in the Canton, Kowloon, and Hong Kong regions with controlling the opium markets. With large scale migration to the US, Canada, and later Europe, opium turned into heroin trade and other criminal activity. The Triads of today (or at least at the publishing of this book, 1990) are criminal rackets in drugs, fraud, extortion, prostitution and sex trafficking, gambling, counterfeiting, goods smuggling, and healthcare fraud.

Today things are very different. Initiation ceremonies are often truncated versions—partly for security reasons, but partly because the old ways are increasingly irrelevant to the new generation of Triad street thugs with their designer clothes and expensive Western cars, who require no other encouragement to be loyal to their Triad than the threat of violent death if they betray their brothers. pg 99-100

Today the Triads still pose a criminal threat and concern in the US, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, and European cities with large Chinese communities. There was an entire chapter on law enforcement efforts to combat the Triads. Like the mafia families, various Triad entities exist and were mentioned throughout the book:
1. Hong Kong-biased Triads: 14K, Sun Yee On, Wo Hop To
2. Taiwan-based Triads: Bamboo Union, Four Seas Gang
3. US-based Triads: Ghost Dragon and Flying Dragon (both in New York City)

Overall this was a great book. I would love to see a revised and expanded/updated version of this. Martin Booth put a lot of hard work into this work. I would recommend this to anyone interested in true crime or organized crime. Thanks!

[Pitri Yosi Leowardi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book explores the history of The Triads, how it came to be, its patriotic roots and its descend into the shadows of criminal world. It also covers in detail the ways the spread out across the world and its consequences. It is interesting to see how the Triad adapted to the changing world, forcing its law-abiding nemesis to do the same.

Booth's writing style made the book enjoyable and less like reading a fact-filled book. However, seeing that the book has been out for so long, it would be best to not take it as a current fact, unless a new edition is recently released.

It's a good read for anyone who is curious to know the beginning of the Triads.