China Cultivated High-Rolling Crime Families before Turning on Them

Picture: UNOCHA Natural Earth/Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post

In an article by The Washington Post, Shibani Mahtani, Christian Shepherd and Pei-Lin Wu report the rise and fall of the Kokang crime families, and their relations with the Myanmar and Chinese officials.

A Washington Post investigation found that Kokang’s criminal networks — principally led by the Wei, Bai and Liu families, according to U.N. officials, Chinese court records and analysts — had for more than a decade enjoyed close relations with Chinese officials, primarily in neighboring Yunnan province, along with support from Beijing and the military government in Myanmar. The Myanmar military chief, Min Aung Hlaing, further solidified the families as political and economic brokers after taking power in a 2021 coup.

Signs of official Chinese concern burst into the open in August when the Chinese ambassador warned Myanmar authorities to “eradicate the cancer of gambling and scams” that was “deeply loathed by the Chinese people.”

Compounds in Laos and Cambodia were raided by local police, accompanied by officers from China. In Myanmar, the Kokang clans vowed to conduct their own crackdown, claiming they would never tolerate such activities in their region. The raids and arrests that followed were performative, U.N. officials and researchers said.