The release from jail next month of a triad boss known as Broken Tooth is fuelling speculation that the Chinese gambling playground of Macau could be on the verge of a return to the vicious gang violence of its colonial past.
Wan Kuok-koi will walk free from prison on December 1 having served 14 years and seven months for offences committed as the enforcer of the 14K triad, the largest organised crime outfit in the then-Portuguese colony in the mid-1990s.
Newspapers in Macau and nearby Hong Kong have run stories with headlines like “Crime Lord Returns”, while the New York Times has asked whether the recent bashing of an old Wan rival meant the southern Chinese city is on the verge of a “new gang war”.
Experts agree that Wan’s reappearance will rekindle memories of some of Macau’s darkest days, when his men fought a violent street “war” against their enemies from the Soi Fong gang in the years before the 1999 handover to China.
But few pay any heed to his reported jail-cell mutterings about reaping revenge upon his old foes, or fear a new cycle of triad violence.
“The Portuguese government was almost leaving and at that time, the public order, everything went very bad, the triads’ activity was very rampant,” Macau University Professor of Criminology Jianhong Liu recalled.