ABSTRACT
As Scott has argued, in the 1990s the colonial administration’s ‘right to rule’ was undermined by People’s Republic of China (PRC) interference in the government’s decisions, making it something of a ‘lame duck’ administration. Gang leaders and triads were known to have close connections to powerful PRC officials, making organised crime a potentially politically embarrassing matter. The implication of Chinese criminals, arms and explosives in Hong Kong crime fed fears that retrocession meant moral decline and–where crime was connected to PRC officialdom–doubts about the government’s capacity to enforce the law after 1997. The Chinese authorities, equally keen to ensure the territory’s stability, promised that China would not become a ‘typhoon shelter’ for Hong Kong criminals. In the mid-1990s, the Hong Kong police reported ‘an excellent and increasingly important relationship with Chinese law enforcement agencies in the form of cross-border intelligence, joint operations and ‘working level contacts’ with the PSB.
