Shanghai Green Gang

The Green Gang (simplified Chinese: 青帮; traditional Chinese: 青幫; pinyin: Qīng Bāng) was a criminal

organization that operated in Shanghai in the early 20th century. It was a secret society established

originally by Fong Toh Tak of the Shaolin temple to protect the Han people who were oppressed by the

Qing dynasty, and to restore the Mings to power. By the 20th century it had acquired such wealth and

power that it had become corrupt, and included many successful businessmen. Under Du Yuesheng, it

controlled the criminal activities in the entire city of Shanghai. The Green Gang focused on opium

(which was supported by local warlords), gambling, and prostitution. Shanghai was the vice capital of

the world at that time.

The Green Gang was often hired to break up union meetings and labor strikes, and was also involved in

the Chinese Civil War. Carrying the name of the Society for Common Progress, it was responsible for

the White Terror massacre of approximately 5,000 pro-Communist strikers in the City of Shanghai in

April 1927, which was ordered by Nationalist leader General Chiang Kai-Shek, who granted Du Yuesheng

the rank of General in the Nationalist army as a reward for conducting the massacre.

The Green Gang was a major financial supporter of Chiang Kai-Shek, who became acquainted with the

gang when he lived in Shanghai from 1915 to 1923.[1] The Green Gang shared its profits from the drug

trade with the Kuomintang after the creation of the Opium Suppression Bureau.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Gang

"Analysis of the Shanghai Green Gang in the 1920's and 1930's presented here revolves around five

main themes. The first of these is what might be called "contemporaneity" of secret societies in the

Republican period. Secret societies were malleable organizations with a great capacity to adapt to

different social and political environments...Secret societies, such as the Green Gang, far from

being feudal anachronisms, were an integral part of the society and politics of twentieth century

China, and that they were capable of adapting positively to the challenges of social and political

change."

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"A second theme is that the hybrid Sino-foreign character of Shanghai, together with the colonial

structure of power in the foreign settlements, was particularly encouraging of secret society

activitis. In the early twentieth century, indeed, Shanghai was composed of three separate

jurisdictions--the Chinese city, the International Settlement, and the French Concession. The

existence of these exclusive and competing national jurisdictions greatly facilitated both the

expansion of Green Gang organization and the proliferation of the rackets controlled by various Green

Gang Groups. At the same time, the security needs of the foreign settlements, particularly the need

to control rapibly increasing Chinese populations, dictated a degree of cooperation between the

foreign authorities and certain powerful Green Gang bosses, with the latter co-opted into the foreign

police forces as members of their respective Chinese detective squads. In other words, certain

favored Green Gang bosses gained tacit official recognition of their rackets in return for

contributing to the effectiveness of the coercive power of the foreign settlements. Some bosses, in

fact, were able to parley the security functions they performed for foreign authorities into real

political power, as occurred in the French Concession. This relationship raises larger questions

concerning the nature of the imperealist system as it operated in Shanghai"

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"Control of the opium traffic and its dealings with the workers and the bourgeoisie inevitably

involved the Green Gang leadership in the politics of the Chinese city. Not only did the Green Gang

leaders maintain close relations with a succession of warlord regimes, but they also became caught up

in the revolutionary politics of the 1920s through their contacts with the two revolutionary parties

of the time, the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party. An important focus for this latter

relationship was their involvement in Chiang Kai Shek's anti-communist coup of April 1927. The

support that the Green Gang bosses gave to Chiang at this time was necessary but notm in itself, a

sufficient condition for the creation of a stable relationshop between themselves and the new state

system established by the Guomindang after 1927-28. This was a complex relationship shaped by a

number of factors and going through a number of phases during the nanjing decade. The turning point

came with the crisis provoked by the the Shanghai Incident in 1932. In the wake of this crisis Du

Yuesheng emerged clearly as the most powerful Green Gang boss in Shanghai. He participared fully in

the new corporatist state created by the Nanjing Government, and through this participation enhanced

significantly his political and economic power."

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Green Gang as an important element in social and political history of Shanghai in the early 20th

cent:

"The Shanghai Green Gang, in fact, provides a useful case study of the ways in which secret

societies, usually regarded as quintessential elements of the traditional society, could respond

positively to the challenges and opportunities provided by China's modern urban society. Through its

creation of s system of syndicate crim in the 1920s, moreover, the Green Gang provides an example of

how such organizations could transform themselves successfully into one of the diverse elements that

served to define the modern age for the Chinese populations of the treaty ports...The study of the

Shanghai Green Gang migh also contribute to an understanding of the complex processes of social and

political change in 20th cent China.."

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Origins of the Green Gang:

"Green Gang emerged in its modern form at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the

anqing daoyou ("friends of the way of tranquility and purity," or the Anqing league), a secret

society active in the Subei region of Jiangsu. The Anqing Daoyou drew on the traditions of the Grand

Canal grain transport boatmen's associations, which were affiliated with the Patriarch Luo Sect (Luo

Zu Jiao) a popular Buddhist sect.

At the same time, it also formed a very close relationship with those elements of the Gelaohui (the

Society of Brothers and Elders) that were active in northern Jiangsu. Through the mediation of the

anqing Daoyou the green gang was able to draw on the traditions of both the Patriarch Luo Sect and

the Gelaohuo. The modern Green Gang, therefore, was essentially the product of the fusion of the

Anqing Daoyou with elements of the Gelaohui."

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The Shanghai Green Gang: politics and organized crime, 1919-1937

By Brian G. Martin

Published by University of California Press, 1996

ISBN 0520201140, 9780520201149

314 pages

http://books.google.com/books?id=1mMdlRHiT44C