After a mass murder at a marijuana farm, a Chinese diplomat visited an organization that has been the subject of investigations. The meetings reflect an international pattern of contacts between Chinese officials and suspected criminal networks.
The photos look like a routine encounter between a senior Chinese diplomat and immigrants in the American heartland: dutiful smiles, casual clothes, a teapot on a table, Chinese and U.S. flags on the wall.
But behind the images, there is a potentially concerning story. During two trips to Oklahoma, Consul General Zhu Di of the Chinese embassy visited a cultural association that has been a target of investigations into Chinese mafias that dominate the state’s billion-dollar marijuana industry. And the community leaders posing with him in the photos? A number of them have pleaded guilty or been prosecuted or investigated for drug-related crimes, according to court documents, public records, photos and social media posts.
“He’s meeting with known criminals,” said Donnie Anderson, the director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control, in an interview.
There is no indication of wrongdoing by the consul general, who is one of China’s top diplomats in the United States. Still, the encounters in Oklahoma reflect a pattern of contacts around the world between China’s authoritarian government and diaspora leaders linked to criminal activity — a subject of increasing concern among Western national security officials, human rights groups and Chinese dissidents.
U.S. and foreign national security officials have alleged that the Chinese state maintains a tacit alliance with Chinese organized crime in the U.S. and across the world. Mobsters overtly support pro-Beijing causes and covertly provide services overseas: engaging in political influence work, moving illicit funds offshore for the Chinese elite and helping persecute dissidents, according to Western officials, court cases and human rights groups. Chinese officials reciprocate by tolerating and sometimes supporting their illicit activities, according to those sources.
One time I was building a home for a client on an Indian reservation in CA and the feds rolled in deep to take out a Chinese grow operation on tribal land. They were feeding the workers meth and heroin in exchange. They caused all sorts of problems including setting fire to the woods because they were all fucked up on drugs.
They all abandoned the property before the feds could arrest them probably because they had people on the inside or they had unknown watch spots to warn if the authorities were coming.
The reservations handle their own policing and call the feds in for that type of operation. The thing I felt though was that it was all some sort of game that the land owners got to sell the land to the chinese cartels, then kicked them off the land with the feds and then got to get cheap equipment from the bust (we are talking about free or cheap skid steers and generators and stuff, super important to have out there), and also get the land back. Rinse and repeat.
It was crazy out there.
So you’re saying you thought the rez was selling land to the Chinese cartel, then calling the feds in to bust them so they could get the land back for cheap?
Damn. That is fuckin wild.
Yea that’s what it seemed like since people said that busts were fairly common.
The people who were stewards of the tribal land would apparently put ads out trying to sell land that wasn’t great to build on, or had no claims, or whatever. So literally anyone could get tribal land. The locals were not happy with it for sure.
This was a while ago so it may have changed in regard to having zero restrictions, hopefully.
Dope
Haha, I always thought this place was a front. I live in OKC, and this place has always been sketchy. It was connected to a “restaurant” called Private Kitchen. This is right in the heart of the Asian district, attached to one of the bigger Asian markets in the state. It was always crazy to me that this Private Kitchen was always closed, but always had people moving boxes in and out.
Makes sense that it was attached to organized crime, we don’t actually have a large immigrant population from mainland China, mostly just a large Vietnamese community.
