The Green Gang (Qing Bang) was a Chinese form of mafia organisation based in Shànghâi, best known for their activities in the 1920s and 1930s as a web of street gangs. The career of their paramount leader, Du Yuesheng, has been well documented in a previous blog, The Emperors of Vice and Crime of Shànghâi‘s Yesteryear (February 2020). But the origins of the gang (which might be more usefully thought of as a clique) were rooted in a specific type of brotherhood associated with boatmen in the early Qing Dynasty (17th-18th centuries).

The story starts with “three sworn brothers”, Weng Yan, Qian Jian and Pan Qing, who won a contract from Emperor Yongzheng (Yinzhen) to manage the transport of grain materials on the Yellow River (Grand Canal) route in Old China. The trio went on to form an association of boatmen which utilised Luojiao principles (Buddhist sect) to attract workers. The organisation that evolved on the Canal was a kind of professional trade federation dedicated to serving the interests of it’s waterborne employees (including the use of strong-arm tactics to protect them from corrupt officials and local thugs) [Brian G Martin, The Shànghâi Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919-1937, (1996)].

🔺 The Grand Canal

Over time, the structure took on a quasi-government character with specific departments formed to handle different functions. It also evolved into a secret society with very strict membership criteria involving a seven-year process before members would be fully admitted. The society’s activities earned the ire of the authorities and was driven underground. After experiencing disruptions in the Grand Canal trade the business eventually dissolved [‘Shanghai’s Shadowy Green Gang’, (Sun Jiahui), (The World of Chinese), 28-Aug-2015, www.theworldofchinese.com].

But the society and the boatmen adapted to the changes, segueing into the salt smuggling business in northern Jiangsu Province – in the process forming a new organisation, Anqing Daoyou (literally “Friends of the Way of Tranquility and Purity”), which was a direct forerunner to the modern Green Gang organisation (‘Shanghai’s Shadowy Green Gang’).

Green versus Red
For a brief period in the early 20th century the Green Gang shared the underworld spotlight in Shànghâi  with a rival body, the Red Gang (Hong Gang)❇. In the years of the early republic the ‘Reds’ managed to establish “a complete monopoly over the illicit trade of (Shànghâi) opium” in cooperation with the Green Gang and the Big Eight Mob (the ubiquitous Green Gang boss Huang Jirong had links to the Red Gang)[‘Shanghai’s Gangs in the Early 20th Century’, (Clay Capra), 10-Dec-2018, www.umdjanus.com]. By the 1920s the ‘Greens’ by themselves were a formidable mob organisation in Shànghâi, trafficking in opium, using stand-over tactics to intimidate workers and business owners [‘The Green Gang of Shanghai’, (Pat Welsh), (China Insight), 01-Nov-2013, www.chinainsight.info].

Du and the KMT 
Huang (and his wife Lin Guisheng) elevated Du Yuesheng to a leadership position in Green Gang based in the French Concession area, from which he never looked back. The Green Gang formed an interesting two-way relationship with the KMT (Kuomintang), it received protection from the KMT and was given a free hand to carry on it’s various illegal business activities in Shànghâi. In return the Green Gang smuggled weapons and money (eg, opium profits) to the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek✡ co-opted Du’s Green Gang in the suppression of the communist element in Shànghâi in 1927 (up to 5,000 communist opponents of Chiang liquidated). Chiang and the Nationalist government—with only a nominal hold over the country—needed the support of local warlords and drug lords like Du as much as they needed the KMT’s imprimatur [Derks, Hans. History of the Opium Problem: The Assault on the East, Ca. 1600-1950. Vol. 105, Brill, 2012. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv4cbhdf. Accessed 21 Feb. 2020].

🔺 Chiang Kai-shek

A secret society of gangsters and a …
The Green Gang was a criminal confederation of leviathan proportions, a Chinese Triad coordinating a wide network of individual gangs with connections to powerful and influential figures in Shànghâi. But another arm of the organisation had a social welfare role through membership of the secret societies. Peasants for example who were driven off their land and into the city could find aid in the banghui – a “mutual help group” [‘Green Gang’,  www.streetsofshanghai.pbworks.com; ’History of the Opium Problem’].

Footnote: Drawing the curtain on the Green Gang
With the defeat and flight of Chiang’s KMT in 1949, the Green Gang also fled Shànghâi for Hong Kong where it opened up heroin refineries, but couldn’t establish itself in the market against the stiff competition of the local drug syndicates in HK. By 1955 Qing Bang had disappeared from the scene [‘Green Gang’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/].

 

 

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❇ at one point the two gangs were allied
✡ Chiang himself may have been a member of the Green Gang during the years he lived in Shànghâi, however the evidence is hazy on this (‘Shanghai’s Shadowy Green Gang’)