PATTERNS OF CHINESE GANG EXTORTION*

Although it is widely acknowledged that Chinese businesses arevictims of extortion by Asian youth gangs, there is little reliable information with which to examine the patterns and social processes of the problem. This paper explores the structure of extortion and other forms of victimization based on surveys of 603 Chinese-owned businesses in three Chinese neigh-borhoods in New York City. It focuses on the patterns, processes, and ex-tent of Chinese gang victimization, and on how the political economy and sociocultural contexts of the Chinese community have regularized and in-stitutionalized the forms of gang victimization. Since immigrat ion laws were re laxed and quotas were ex-panded in 1965, the number of Chinese in the Un i ted States has increased f rom 236,084 in 1960 to 1.6 mi l l ion in 1990 (Barr inger 1991). L ike other immigrant groups before them, most Chinese coming to the Uni ted States were law-abiding and hard-work ing (Kwong 1987; Zhou 1992). Nevertheless, ome were a l leged to be involved heavi ly in prof i table cr iminal act ivit ies uch as extort ion, gambl ing, and prost i tut ion (Bres ler 1981; K inkead 1992; Posner 1988). By 1984, U.S. law enforcement author i t ies observed in-creased invo lvement of Chinese cr iminals in i l legal smuggl ing of al iens, hero in traff icking, and money launder ing (Pres ident 's Com-mission on Organized Cr ime 1984). Also as with other immigrant groups before them, youth gangs appeared in neighborhoods where Chinese immigrant famil ies sett led (see, for example, Moore 1991 * Support for this research was provided by Grant 89-IJ-CX-0021 from the National Institute of Justice. The opinions are those of the authors and do not re-flect the policies or views of the U.S. Department of Justice. The authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful critiques of earlier version of this manuscript and Karen Feinberg for editing it