How Bamboo grew: 10,000-strong Taiwanese triad linked to Hong Kong executive's kidnapping is ‘one of world’s most dangerous gangs’

The Taiwan-based United Bamboo triad gang, reportedly linked to the kidnap of Hong Kong businessman Wong Yuk-kwan, is one of the world's largest organised crime groups with its hands in all kinds of illegal activities.

The infamy of the 10,000-strong triad in drug and human trafficking is known internationally; in 2008, it was ranked by the US magazine, Foreign Policy, as one of the world's most dangerous gangs.

United Bamboo is also engaged in loan-sharking, control of prostitutes and arms trafficking.

The triad's origins go back to 1956, when it was founded by mainlanders who fled to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government after losing the civil war in 1949.

It had close ties to the government, Hong Kong's pro-Kuomintang 14K triad and several major Japanese yakuza gangs.