The Dragon Syndicates - Softcover

Booth, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553505904 ISBN 13: 9780553505900

Publisher: Bantam, 2000

Synopsis

It is not unreasonable to believe that potentially the greatest threat to world civil order...comes from Chinese international criminal syndicates and gangs otherwise collectively referred to as the Triads' FBI briefing report
Triad societies are today the most widespread and ruthless criminal group in the history of the world, posing the most important criminal threat to world stability that has ever existed. Just as the Mafia are organised as 'families', so the Triads are organised as 'brotherhoods', often along clan lines. They are in essence over 2,000 years old. The father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, was a Triad society member, creating and financing the great Republic of China through the degenerate trade of opium, which has now become the multi-million dollar heroin industry. Martin Booth's remarkable study encompasses not only the more 'traditional' localised crime - prostitution, theft, racketeering - but also their more repercussive activities on a global scale: the drugs trade, money laundering, stock market manipulation and insider dealing, computer hacking, international prostitution, infiltration of media assets, art smuggling, and much more.
Today the Triads are poised to achieve what no organised crime gang has ever dared dream of - a complete, international criminal network, exclusively Chinese, almost impossible to infiltrate and with its fingers on the world's pulse through its own banking networks, legal affairs and political protection. Today, it would appear the Triads are ready to make the next century a Chinese century...seemingly, nothing can stop them.
The Dragon Syndicates tells the full, incredible story of the Triads - their evolution over two millennia, their rituals and mythologies, their role in shaping this century, and the criminal history and lives of the main players. Sources within the UN claim the Triads pose the greatest criminal threat the world has ever known - after reading Martin Booth's authoritative, dynamic, superbly written and riveting new study, you'll understand why...

About this title

About the Author

An internationally known and admired writer and biographer, Martin Booth was also an acclaimed novelist - his THE INDUSTRY OF SOULS having been shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize. His penultimate book was CANNABIS: A HISTORY, and he died in February 2004 shortly after completing GWEILO.

From the Back Cover

According to UN sources, the Triads pose the greatest potential criminal threat the world has ever known.

Over the last three centuries, wherever the Chinese have emigrated, they have taken their outlawed secret brotherhoods. Bound by archaic oaths, the Triads demand absolute loyalty, exacting brutal retribution from transgressors and opponents alike. Few have ever infiltrated their ranks; fewer still have survived to tell the tale.

Now internationally recognised Oriental expert and bestselling author Martin Booth tells the full, incredible story of the Triads - from their beginnings over two thousand years ago to the unrivalled criminal empire they operate today. Here he explains their rituals and mythologies, identifies the key figures and, perhaps most disturbingly of all, reveals how the Triads' interests have extended beyond the more 'traditional' realms of extortion, narcotics, prostitution and money laundering to include hi-tech computer crime, arms dealing, blackmail and politics. Today, their insidious influence transcends national and international boundaries to encompass the globe.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0553505904
• ISBN 13: 9780553505900
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 608