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CHINESE NARCOTICS TRAFFICKING: ANATOMY OF A NETWORK
Summary
Narcotics trafficking in Southeast Asia is conducted almost exclusively by indigenous ethnic Chinese operating from within a number of independent trafficking networks. These networks, while dominated by tightly-knit "core groups,. neverthe- less tend to be relatively loosely-organized and divided hierarchically into roughly three levels, based on function and renumeration.
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Beneath the core group, which functions as the nucleus of any network, comes the second or middle level, which is composed of managers, middlemen, financiers and heroin chemists. At both these levels, mutual needs, shared backgrounds and, generally, business integrity, are the rule as, more often than not, the identities and activities. of most of the participants are known to each other.
Couriers, local wholesalers, street sellers, etc., make up the lowest level of the narcotics trafficking business. At this level, connections to organized networks are remote, if at all. Generally, the profits at this level are lower, while the risks are concomitantly greater, than for the middle or core group levels. Few at the lowest level are even Chinese, demographic testimony of its unworthy estate.
Trafficking Networks
There are few rigid organizations or relation- ships in the Chinese-operated narcotics trafficking business. The networks tend to be flexible,
geared to handle whatever volume of business comes their way.
They are controlled by small core groups, the highest level in the trafficking strata.
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