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Heijin: Organized Crime, Business, and Politics in Taiwan
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Comments/Reviews
Description: In recent years, hei jin or "black gold" politics has become a major issue in Taiwan. The term "black gold" refers to the penetration of violent racketeers and self-serving businessmen into politics. According to the author, this situation can be very threatening to a society since it undermines the integrity and legitimacy of public institutions. As members of the underworld transform their criminal identities into that of legitimate businessmen, a society may experience changes in the institutional structure of the political economy.
This book incorporates the first systematic research on this issue. It examines the structure and illegal activities of organized crime groups in Taiwan, and explores their infiltration into the business and political arenas. The author looks at the intricate relationships among government officials, elected deputies, businessmen, and racketeers. He includes data collected from first-hand interviews with underworld figures, government officials, law enforcement authorities, elected representatives, and other key informants. This timely study gives scholars and policymakers important new insights on the social and political contexts of organized crime in Taiwan.
Selected Contents:
Tables and Figures
Acknowledgements
I. The Underworld
1. The Upperworld and the Underworld
2. Crime Groups in Taiwan
3. Criminal Activities
II. The Transformation
4. From Big Brother to Entrepreneur
5. From Big Brother to Politician
6. The Development and Impact of Black-Gold Politics
III. Suppression and Reaction
7. Combating Organized Crime
8. Internationalization of Taiwanese Organized Crime
9. Black-Gold Society
Appendix: Research Methods
Notes
Glossary
References
Index
Comment(s): "This rich store of primary data is augmented by a close examination and analysis of official and media reports. ... Chin reaches some very significant and original conclusions that pertain not only to the state of organized crime in Taiwan, but to the global scene as well." -- James O. Finckenauer, The State University of New Jersey, Rutgers
"Criminologist Ko-lin Chin's Heijin offers the first English-language analysis of the political role of organized crime in Taiwan. Chin draws on a wealth of first-hand accounts from the very gangsters, politicians, and business tycoons that inhabit the "black-gold" nexus characterizing Taiwan's political transformation over the past two decades. Most significantly, Chin offers incontrovertible evidence of the causal link between the internal and external challenges threatening the KMT's longstanding rule in the 1980s and the epidemic expansion of "black-gold" politics in the 1990s as the KMT politicized organized crime groups, local factions, and business conglomerates in an ultimately vain attempt to retain political power." -- Karl Fields, University of Puget Sound
Review(s): ...the best and most detailed account of Taiwan's criminal underworld that has ever been written in English. ... This book's publication is very timely. Far Eastern Economic Review
...Chin provides an extremely detailed empirical account of organized, and sometimes not-so-organized, criminal networks in present-day Taiwan. ... As a quasi-anthropological study of the norms, tactics and dramas of the underworld in Taiwan, Heijin is truly masterful. ... the empirical richness of Chin's research in the book ... is unmatched in any other English-language account of the criminalization of business and politics in Taiwan. Pacific Affairs, Vol.77, No.3
    
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