History
By the 20th century it had acquired such wealth and power that it had become corrupt, and included many successful businessmen. Under Du Yuesheng, it controlled the criminal activities in the entire city of Shanghai. The Green Gang focused on opium (which was supported by local warlords), extortion, gambling, and prostitution. Shanghai was considered by some the vice capital of the world at that time.
The Green Gang was often hired by Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang to break up union meetings and labor strikes and was also involved in the Chinese Civil War. Carrying the name of the Society for Common Progress, it was — along with other criminal gangs — responsible for the White Terror massacre of approximately 5,000 pro-Communist strikers in Shanghai in April 1927, which was ordered by Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang granted Du Yuesheng the rank of general in the National Revolutionary Army later.
The Green Gang was a major financial supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, who became acquainted with the gang when he lived in Shanghai from 1915 to 1923. The Green Gang shared its profits from the drug trade with the Kuomintang after the creation of the Opium Suppression Bureau.
Read more about this topic: Green Gang
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (18751947)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (19131960)