A Shenzhen police crackdown last week on a gang linked to Hong Kong's Sun Yee On triad was six years in the making. And it has cost some officials their jobs because of their suspected ties to organised crime, according to mainland media.
Shenzhen police chief Li Ming said officers had arrested 193 suspects, seized 11 guns and more than 1 billion yuan (HK$1.2 billion) in gang assets and large quantities of drugs.
They also shut down 44 businesses with alleged triad links.
Li said that Liu Shaoxiong, party head of the Shajing Street Committee in the city's Baoan district, had been sacked. Liu has been handed over to prosecutors for an internal party probe of his alleged close links to the so-called Shajing Sun Yee On branch, the biggest gang in the special economic zone.
'My predecessor Li Feng started to probe [criminal cases] in Shajing and found many were related to triad operations, but he couldn't take action immediately because of a lack of evidence,' Li Ming was quoted by the Southern Metropolis Daily as saying.
'The [Shajing] Sun Yee On has direct links with many illegal real estate projects in the region ... and in some cases this has led to murder.'
The anti-triad campaign, launched last month by Guangdong party chief Wang Yang, has been applauded by Shajing residents. They have been living under the shadow of triad chief Chen Yaodong since the early 1990s.