Brutal Gangs: Dai Huen Jai
Source: Wikipedia
Dai Huen Jai—or “Big Circle Gang,” in hilariously translated Chinese—had what you might call a bad childhood. The group originated during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, as mobs of students waged a street war against their elders at the behest of Mao.
After he died, things got sticky for his paramilitary comrades, the Red Guards. Many of them were arrested by the post-Mao government and sent for “re-education,” a term that is legally required to be in quotation marks every time it’s used.
Coming out of Chinese gulags, some of the tougher and less law-abiding Red Guards decided against taking slave-wage jobs at sweatshops modeled after termite mounds and opted instead to go into organized crime. Today, the gang makes its money from extortion, human trafficking, and prostitution. They also take a percentage of most of the heroin trade in China.
What’s unique about the Big Circle is its diffuse organizational structure. As violent as its members can be and as effective as they certainly are at strong-arming businesses, they don’t seem to have any kind of central command structure. Instead, these smugglers, pimps, and killers all seem to operate in loose groups across Asia, Australia, and the Americas.
Next up: East Asian Murder Inc…
