Opinion | How tough Chaoshan became the Sicily of South China
With little local industry, Guangdong's tough eastern region has learnt to live off its wits
Some call it the toughest part of a tough province. For decades, the Chaoshan area in eastern Guangdong has long been a hotbed for criminal syndicates that thrive on smuggling, counterfeiting and, more recently, the booming amphetamine trade.
Last month, more than 3,000 paramilitary troops and police in vans, helicopters and speedboats swooped on Boshe village in Lufeng county in one of the biggest drug busts conducted on the mainland.
Police had earlier attempted the operation but were thwarted by villagers armed with imitation AK-47s and grenades. This time they brought reinforcements, before dawn, to elude lookouts who had previously alerted the gangs to the police presence .
Police seized three tonnes of crystal meth worth an estimated HK$1.8 billion and 23 tonnes of raw materials. Officers arrested 182 people including the alleged ring leader, Cai Dongjia , the party secretary of Boshe and a People's Congress representative in nearby Shanwei .
So what lies behind this region's law lessness and its long association with organised crime? Lufeng is the hometown of one of Hong Kong's most notorious triads, the Sun Yee On. The Macau gangster Wan Kuok-koi, or "Broken Tooth", is a Lufeng native.
As the American historian Alfred McCoy noted in The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia: "[Chaoshan] syndicates have controlled much of Asia's illicit drug traffic since the mid-1800s and have played a role in China's organised crime rather similar to the Sicilian Mafia in Italy and the Corsican syndicates in France."