Patriotic Criminals: China’s Covert Netherworld in Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Existing literature on flows of China’s private capital and Chinese-origin transnational criminals (COTCs) into Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands tends to portray the problem as a pathology afflicting China equally, or as being beyond China’s control.   In contrast, this talk presents cases where there is evidence of a crime-state nexus.  We apply Alfred McCoy’s concept of the “covert netherworld”, originally coined in relation to United States covert operations, to a Sinic domain where business, criminal and United Front-affiliated actors interact while pursuing a range of objectives.   In this ambiguous milieu, COTCs brush shoulders with PRC state actors, occasionally swapping favours, whilst burnishing their patriotic credentials in order to legitimise their exploits overseas to home audiences.  By profiling two COTCs, She Zhijiang and Wan Kuok-Koi, we argue for a relationship of periodic cooperation for mutual benefit, in contrast to one in which Beijing directs COTC activities with a firm hand.  This conception resolves the contradiction that one the one hand, China is both hurt by the COTCs and intermittently cracks-down on them, and on the other hand, uses them opportunistically for certain purposes.


About the speakers
Greg Raymond is an associate professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, researching Southeast Asian politics and foreign relations, with a focus on Thailand and the Mekong states. His current work focusses on transnational crime and authoritarian collusion. Dr Raymond is currently the President of the Association of Mainland Southeast Asian Scholars (AMSEAS) and is International Relations editor for the journal Asian Studies Review. He is the author of Thai Military Power: A Culture of Strategic Accommodation (NIAS Press 2018) and the lead author of The United States-Thai Alliance: History, Memory and Current Developments (Routledge, 2021). His research has been published in leading journals including Democratization, Contemporary Security Policy, the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Contemporary Southeast Asia and South East Asia Research. Before joining the ANU in 2015, Greg worked for the Australian government in the strategic and international policy areas of the Department of Defence, during which time he was posted to the Australian Embassy in Bangkok 2005-2008.  Dr Raymond is a fluent Thai and Lao speaker.

Graeme Smith is an associate professor at the Department of Pacific Affairs at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs where he leads the geopolitics cluster. His team’s research examines the impact of Chinese aid and investment, migration, policing, telecommunications and transnational crime in the Pacific. He is the co-author of The China Alternative: Changing Regional Order in the Pacific Islands (ANU Press 2021) and last year testified to US Congress, informing their Pacific strategy. His work is published in The Australian Journal of International Affairs, Journal of Peasant Studies, Third World Quarterly, Regulation & Governance, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Pacific Affairs and The China Journal. He is the winner of best article prizes in The Journal of Pacific History and The China Quarterly. He also hosts the awarding-winning Little Red Podcast and edits the Pacific Currents section of the Journal of Pacific History.


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