The arrest in Thailand in August 2022 of Chinese tycoon She Zhijiang, the head of the Yatai International Holding Group that built Shwe Kokko, and his deportation to China on Nov. 10, 2025 appeared to be a major blow to the scam centers along the Thai–-Myanmar border. Chinese authorities accused him of operating illegal gambling and scam networks which, according to them, swindled Chinese citizens of 150 million yuan (approximately US$22 million). In a similar development in January this year, the Cambodian authorities extradited to China the billionaire businessman Chen Zhi of the Prince Group, who was accused of masterminding a vast, Cambodia-based cryptocurrency scam into which trafficked workers were forced to defraud victims across the globe.
It is worth noting that the Chinese media did not mention Chen’s criminal activities until the official news agency Xinhua reported his extradition three months after the U.S. Department of Justice had unsealed an indictment in a federal court in New York charging him with wire fraud and money laundering. According to a Jan. 11 briefing paper on the website The Asian Crime Century, which reports on organized crime in Asia, “The extradition is unusual as no criminal case or investigation involving Chen Zhi in [China] was publicly known, and he as well as his associates had conducted their criminal activities with no interference from [Chinese] authorities.” The request for his extradition does, however, show that Beijing “is taking action, but also enables the authorities to cover any embarrassing contacts that Chen had with Chinese government agencies.”
The Asian Crime Century also stated that “the curious case of Chen Zhi proves once again that in China one can prosper in criminality as long as it does not become too large or threaten the state (or the Communist Party).”
She Zhijiang, too, had for years enjoyed a close and cordial relationship with the Chinese Embassy in Yangon. “He could call the embassy any time and speak to them,” said a source close to the Shwe Kokko operation. His company was registered in Hong Kong and headquartered in Thailand, and he claimed in a 2024 interview with Al Jazeera that he was a Chinese agent who had been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security while he was in the Philippines. It was his knowledge of state secrets, he claimed, that now made him a target for the Chinese government and Beijing was seeking his extradition to “eliminate” him.
The convoluted relationship between Chinese organized crime and officialdom can also be seen in the life and fate of Wan Kuok-koi, better known as Broken Tooth Koi (he had lost some of his teeth in a street fight in his hometown of Macau.) From being a street fighter, Wan rose to becoming the alleged leader of the 14K triad in Macau, well-known and feared by many.
He was arrested in May 1998 after a bomb exploded in a minivan belonging to Antonio Marques Baptista, the new crime-busting head of the then-Portuguese territory’s police force. No evidence of his involvement in that attack was ever revealed in court. Instead, he was brought to justice on old charges related to intimidation of employees at the Lisboa Casino in Macau, loansharking, and suspicion of being a member of “an illegal organization”—in plain language, a triad.
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After a lengthy and complicated trial—where one witness after another was struck by sudden bouts of amnesia and could not remember anything—Wan was sentenced to 15 years in prison and had all his assets confiscated in November 1999, a month before Macau reverted to Chinese rule and became, like Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China. He was incarcerated in a purpose-built top-security detention facility on Coloane, one of two islands that form part of Macau.
Few expected him to re-emerge as what he had always claimed to be, a “prominent businessman.” But that is exactly what happened when he was granted early release in December 2012 after 13 years and 10 months behind bars. Using his old connections, Wan soon nestled back into the casino business in Macau. After a few years, he launched a cryptocurrency called Dragon Coin and established three entities which at first operated out of Cambodia: the Hongmen History and Culture Association; the Dongmei Group, which is officially headquartered in Hong Kong; and the Palau China Hung-Mun Cultural Association, supposedly based in the Pacific Island nation of Palau.
The names said it all. Hongmen, or Hung Mun in Wan’s native Cantonese dialect, is the name of the original underworld triads formed in the 18th century. According to a 2020 statement by the U.S. Treasury, the Hongmen History and Culture Association in particular soon spread its influence from Cambodia to other countries in Southeast Asia—especially Myanmar, where Wan’s Dongmei Group is a major investor in the casino enclaves close to the Thai border, in particular those south of Myawaddy.
But how was it possible for a convicted felon and alleged leader of an organized crime group to become an influential and seemingly untouchable business tycoon? It is evident that Wan has powerful connections and is protected by high-level officials in China. According to a researcher who follows developments in Myanmar’s frontier areas, “Wan Kuok Koi clearly has tremendous influence across China, Hong Kong and Macau, and close relations with the local government in Guangdong province as well as very deep ties with the Chinese Communist Party’s united front organizations and overseas Chinese associations. In my view, the Party sees him as useful in doing a lot of its political work, both in Hong Kong and Macau, and in Southeast Asia more broadly.” In other words, Wan’s involvement in cross-border businesses in the Myawaddy–Mae Sot area could be seen as an informal part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative—and in return he enjoys protection for his more behind-the-scenes activities.
In China, there has always been a symbiosis between law and crime. The links between officialdom and secret societies became obvious to the outside world in the run-up to Hong Kong’s return to the “motherland”, which eventually happened on July 1, 1997.
On April 8, 1993, Tao Siju, then chief of China’s Public Security Bureau, gave an informal press conference to a group of local reporters in the British territory. After making it clear that the “counter-revolutionaries” who had demonstrated for democracy in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 would not have their long prison sentences reduced, he began talking about the triads: “As for organizations like the triads in Hong Kong, as long as they are patriotic, as long as they are concerned with Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability, we should unite with them.” Tao also invited the “patriotic triads” to come to China to set up businesses there.
The statement sent shockwaves through Hong Kong’s then professional police force, and there was an uproar in the territory’s still independent media. But the people of Hong Kong should not have been surprised. Deng Xiaoping, the father of China’s economic reforms, had over the years hinted at the existence of connections between China’s security services and some Hong Kong triads. In a speech in the Great Hall of the People in October 1984, Deng had pointed out that not all triads were bad. Some of them were “good” and “patriotic”, he said.
Before Hong Kong was handed over to Beijing, certain “patriotic” triads were Beijing’s eyes and ears in the territory. They infiltrated trade unions and even the media and reported their findings back to the authorities on the mainland. In July 2019—by which time Hong Kong had been a supposedly self-governing SAR for more than two decades and local people were demanding democratic reforms—masked men equipped with wooden sticks and metal rods stormed into a train station in Hong Kong, assaulting people returning home from a pro-democracy protest. In other incidents, thugs were seen beating up pro-democracy demonstrators and removing tents and barriers they had set up. Needless to say, no action was taken against the perpetrators.
Traditionally, the triads were staunchly anti-communist and close to the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT). In the late 1920s and 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek made extensive use of the notorious Green Gang to suppress political opposition in Shanghai. In return, they received protection for their other activities such as gambling, prostitution and extortion rackets. The most powerful triad in recent years, the Sun Yee On, was established in 1919 and its first leader, Heung Chin, was reportedly a major-general in the KMT government’s military intelligence bureau, where he was subordinate to General Kot Siu-wong, who founded what later became known as the 14K triad.
Under Heung Chin’s eldest son and successor, Heung Wah-yim, the Sun Yee On adapted to new realities and began cooperating with the communist authorities. A few days before security chief Tao Siju made his stunning public statement in April 1993, a new glitzy nightclub called Top Ten had opened in Beijing. One of the co-owners was Charles Heung Wah-keung, Heung Wah-yim’s younger brother and a prominent figure in Hong Kong’s film and entertainment industry—and the other was Tao himself.
Another example of how triad loyalties had changed became obvious in 2020, when Charles Heung Wah-keung applied for residency in Taiwan. His then wife, Tiffany Chen, is Taiwanese, but the Taiwan government rejected his application on the ground of his membership in the Sun Yee On—and his open support for the CCP. According to the Taipei Times of Dec. 20, 2020, Charles’s son, the actor and film producer Jacky Heung Cho, is a member of the National Committee of the All-China Youth Federation which is connected to the Chinese Communist Youth League. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported on Feb. 25, 2021 that Jacky was also denied permanent residency in Taiwan, then on the basis of “danger of threatening national interest, public safety, or public order or engaging in terrorist activities.”
All this begs the question why such seemingly well-connected crime figures as She Zhijiang and Chen Zhi fell from grace and ended up in Chinese prisons. One reason could be that they became too big for comfort and China’s security authorities could not control them any longer. They had also become public figures and, therefore, an embarrassment to Chinese authorities. Another explanation, offered by inside sources, is that She Zhijiang (and possibly also Chen Zhi, but that case is murkier) ended up on the wrong side in an ongoing power struggle between President Xi and some of his generals. She may not himself have chosen sides, but more powerful people who protected him lost out in that power struggle. Who they could be is shrouded in mystery and it is, according to inside sources, quite possible than not even She knew their identities. He was little more than a pawn in a much bigger game—and it is that game which is now being played out in the Thai–Myanmar border areas.