Living In A Mafia-Run City

Last year Chongqing got a new mayor, and he initiated a huge mafia crackdown in Chongqing. It was the talk of the city, and Chinese news, for my last 6 months or so. People were arrested, some executed, and the entire police force had to change their station assignments to try to break up the rings.

It didn’t affect me too much directly, but it was something people talked about in casual conversation, which I found to be rather remarkable. In my experience, Chinese friends didn’t talk to me about the government (and I never brought it up, either). But they filled me in on the daily developments of who was being arrested, the amount of money being exchanged in the mafia rings, and how it was changing the city police assignments etc.

One thing that did affect me was the end of the late-night mafia buses. Of course, prior to the arrests, I didn’t know they were mafia buses. All I knew was they were the only buses that ran all-night routes I regularly needed, saving me some expensive taxi fares. I had been warned that the buses were unsafe and the drivers were crazy, even by Chongqing standards. (In fact, a few months before I arrived in Chongqing, one of these buses had driven off an overpass on a route I used all the time.) It turns out the bus drivers weren’t actually licensed bus drivers, nor were the buses examined for safety in a regular basis. The buses shut down, but I didn’t know why until the mafia arrests hit the news. A few places we used to hang out at were also shutdown temporarily.

I had often described to friends in person that living in Chinese culture is, for an American, a little like what we imagine living in the mafia is like; where American culture traditionally observes the rule of law, Chinese culture places relationships above the law. Perhaps the only part of American culture that observes relationships above the law is what we would call organized crime. In Chinese culture it is okay to put the relationship before the law. I have often said that if you know the right people in China, it is the easiest place to live because you can get anything done that you need or want. That’s just how Chinese culture operates. It’s not criminal, it’s just how things are.

But in Chongqing, apparently things went a little further than that, hence the crackdown. It certainly did make my last few months a little more interesting. If you want to more about it, there are a few articles here, here and here.