Hongmen Associations Have Links to United Front and Organized Crime

Executive Summary:

• Hongmen associations, with historical roots in Qing-era secret societies, have become entangled in Chinese Communist Party (CCP) united front efforts abroad, particularly through patriotic messaging promoting unification with Taiwan. Their mythologized origins and rituals make them nearly indistinguishable from criminal triad societies.
• Criminal actors like former 14K triad boss Wan Kuok-koi have co-opted the Hongmen brand to build business ventures in One Belt One Road countries, including security firms, liquor brands, and even cryptocurrency—all under the banner of patriotism and cultural heritage.
• The CCP has tolerated and even benefited from this arrangement, as triad-affiliated Hongmen groups serve its geopolitical goals. Events like the 2023 “Taiwan All Circles Conference to Promote Peaceful Reunification” show how Hongmen has become a platform for CCP-aligned messaging overseas.

Hongmen (洪門; “great gate” or “vast family”) associations are expanding their activities in multiple countries, with individuals and organizations who claim affiliation with Hongmen associations increasingly operating in One Belt One Road partner countries. Advertisements for businesses involving these associations include selling branded luxury watches, Maotai (茅台; aka Moutai) liquor, and “Hung Mun” beer—using the Hongmen name as a marketing tool.

These associations are deeply intertwined with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) united front activities. They promote the Party’s key messaging priorities such as patriotic rhetoric about national unification with Taiwan and traditional Chinese culture. They are also connected with criminal gangs. Hongmen have operated as Chinese community organizations overseas for over a century but the distinction between them and criminal triad societies, with which they share rituals and mythology, is blurred. This makes it difficult to tell legitimate cultural organizations from criminal networks, allowing some triads to operate under the Hongmen name for legitimacy.

Wan Kuok-koi (尹國駒), also known as “Broken Tooth Koi” (崩牙駒), is an alleged former leader of the Macau 14K triad who has used the Hongmen brand to front his businesses. He exemplifies a broader trend among Chinese criminals who, by publicly declaring loyalty to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) through Hongmen organizations, seek tacit acceptance for their overseas operations.

The Origins of Hongmen

Hongmen, or Hung Mun, traces its origins to sworn brotherhoods and mutual aid associations formed during the Qing Dynasty. According to one central legend, the organization was originally founded after 128 Shaolin monks helped Emperor Kangxi (康熙帝) repel an invasion. Refusing any reward, the monks returned to their monastery but were later accused of rebellion. The Emperor ordered the temple’s destruction, from which only five monks survived. The survivors devoted themselves to overthrowing the Qing and restoring the Ming, inspired after finding a stone tripod engraved with the words “Oppose the Qing, restore the Ming” (反清复明). They formed the Tiandihui (天地会; Heaven and Earth Society) as a secret revolutionary brotherhood and adopted the surname Hong (洪) after the regnal name of the Ming’s founder. They also used a triangular seal representing heaven, earth, and man, which later became the iconic symbol of “triad” societies in the West.

This creation myth is apocryphal but has endured in part because of its appeal to nationalism, which Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) and other revolutionaries utlized in the early twentieth century (Jiang Sun, Secret Societies and the 1911 Revolution, 2017; Wikisource/Plan for National Reconstruction, accessed May 30). Suppressed by colonial powers and outlawed by the CCP after 1949, Hongmen associations survived in Taiwan, where the Hong Men International Headquarters registered legally in 2004 (Hung Mun Headquarters, accessed May 28).

Hongmen Links to the United Front System

Hongmen are involved in the PRC governance system via the China Zhi Gong Party (中国致公党; lit. “Public Interest Party of China”), one of eight nominally “democratic” political parties represented in the State Council. These parties are managed as part of the united front system (United Front Work Department, June 21, 2005). In the early twentieth century, before becoming an official political party, it was a Hongmen organization that supported Sun Yat-sen’s efforts to revive China. According to the World Hongmen Management Center, eight out of ten overseas Chinese in the United States were members at that time. After the Chinese civil war, Hongmen that stayed in mainland China became the China Zhi Gong Party, which is now based at No. 55 Andingmenwai Street, Beijing—the same location as the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party (中国农工民主党), another of the PRC’s eight officially sanctioned democratic parties (World Hongmen Management Center, September 17, 2023; Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party, accessed May 28).

The World Hongmen Management Center actively promotes unification of the PRC and Taiwan. In November 2023, it hosted the “2023 Taiwan All Circles Conference to Promote Peaceful Reunification” (台湾各界促进和平统一大会). Attended by over 500 representatives from the CCP, government, military, religious groups, and major non-governmental organizations, the conference “unanimously condemned the ‘retrograde actions’” (一致声讨 … “倒行逆施”) of Taiwan’s government, which it characterized as “a pawn of the United States” (美国棋子) (World Hongmen Management Center, November 14, 2023). The role of the World Hongmen Management Centre seems to be influencing rather than directing, in the same manner as many united front activities. Hongmen within Taiwan also conduct united front work. The chairman of the Taiwan International Hongmen Chinese Association (国际洪门中华总会), Liu Peixun (刘沛勋), said at the conference that the Hongmen “is a hardcore force that is clear-cut in its stance of opposing independence and promoting reunification” (“反独促统”旗帜鲜明的铁杆部队) and has long been carrying out work to “resist Taiwan independence forces and promote cross-strait reunification” (对抗台独势力及促进两岸统一) (World Hongmen Management Center, November 14, 2023).

The World Hongmen Organization (WHMO; 世界洪門組織), a separate group headquartered in Colorado, has helped internationalize Hongmen’s ties to united front activities (WHMO, accessed May 28). In its constitution, the first item it lists under the scope of its business is “hold various patriotic propaganda activities, introduce various dynamics and progress of the Hongmen cause around the world, and vigorously promote measures and policies for China’s peaceful unification” (举办各种爱国主义宣传活动，介绍全球洪门事业发展的各种动态和进展，大力推广宣传中国和平统一方针、政策) (WHMO, accessed May 30). Part of this work is presumably carried out by one of its constituent organizations, the Propaganda Team for Promoting China’s Peaceful Reunification (促进中国和平统一宣讲团) (WHMO, accessed May 30).

The organization’s sprawling structure includes affiliated offices across the globe from Hong Kong and Nairobi to Toronto and Madrid. It oversees a Business Development Department (事业拓展部) that claims to be active in—among other things—the health industry, blockchain, industrial development, rural revitalization, and hospitality. A Brand Development Center (品牌发展中心) is responsible for Hongmen-branded products (WHMO, accessed May 30). It even claims to be a United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)-registered NGO—though it does not appear in the United Nations’s own directory—and presents itself as a global platform for communication, mutual aid, and development among Hongmen members (WHMO, accessed May 28; UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, accessed May 28).

Hongmen Links to Criminals

The website of the World Hongmen Organization refers to Wan Kuok-koi as the president of the World Hongmen Historical and Cultural Association, although it does not explain the relationship between the two Hongmen organizations (WHMO, September 26, 2022).

Starting in 1996, the Macau faction of the 14k led by Wan engaged in violent turf wars with rival triad groups over the control of casino VIP rooms and vice operations. That year, Macau recorded 21 murders, with a dozen more in the first five months of 1997 (China Brief, February 25, 2022). Wan was arrested in May 1997, and in November 1999 was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for charges including criminal association, loan sharking, and illegal gambling. He was released on December 1, 2012, after serving the majority of his sentence.

Shortly after Wan’s release, on March 22, 2013, Wan became President of the World Hongmen History and Culture Association (世界洪門歷史文化協會) in Macau (Imprensa Oficial of Macau, March 12, 2013). The association claims its mission is “to love the nation, organize cultural exchange activities in various places, and pass on the history and culture of the Xinhai Revolution” (熱愛國家民族，組織各地文化交流活動，卑能傳承辛亥革命歷史文化) (South China Morning Post, October 6, 2021). (The Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing in 1911.)

In a speech delivered in February 2018, Wan announced a plan to establish a Hongmen Security Company to protect PRC merchants in the One Belt One Road countries. He emphasized that the association’s motto is “loving and supporting the country” and pledged to do his utmost to “promote the national policy and assist in whatever way for peaceful and united cross-straits relations” (Macau Business, February 23, 2018; Asia Times, February 23, 2018). Although there is no public indication of the current state of the Hongmen Security Company, there has been a significant growth in the number of unregulated private security companies operating in Cambodia and Myanmar (SCMP, June 24, 2021). Later in 2018, Wan announced that the World Hongmen History and Culture Association had established its headquarters in Cambodia, with plans to launch a cryptocurrency and open schools for overseas Chinese to learn about Chinese culture (Macau Business, June 2, 2018). He has since continued to promote Hongmen-linked business ventures and publicly state his support for the unification of the PRC and Taiwan, as seen in the many references by Wan and associates.

Between 2021 and 2024, several Douyin posts highlighted the expanding international presence of the World Hongmen History and Culture Association. In October 2021, a user named Uncle Jiang (江大叔) shared a video of incense burning at an altar to mark the association’s official entry into Cambodia (Douyin, October 6, 2021). A year later, images surfaced of a branch in Uganda featuring armed local security guards posing with Hongmen symbols (Douyin, September 30, 2022). In December 2023, a representative of the National Operation Center of Hongmen Liquor posted a photo of Wan Kuok-koi holding a can of Hung Mun beer, claiming it was produced in Cambodia under the association’s authorization (Douyin, December 14, 2023). Most recently, in April 2024, a user shared images of Wan with Hongmen insignia and documents, announcing that a branch in Hainan had been approved by the association’s General Assembly and emphasizing Hongmen’s mission to serve the country (Douyin, April 13, 2024).

The U.S. government has sanctioned Wan and his Hongmen-related ventures for their criminal ties under the Global Magnitsky Act. These include the World Hongmen History and Culture Association, the Palau China Hung-Mun Cultural Association, and the Dongmei Group. The latter is a key investor in the Saixigang Industrial Zone in Myanmar, a crime hub that uses trafficked labor and whose victims have been subject to torture and extortion (U.S. Department of Treasury, December 9, 2020; The New York Times, December 17, 2023; Justice for Myanmar, August 29, 2024).

Conclusion

Hongmen have long been intertwined with overseas Chinese networks, including with criminal triad societies. For more than a century they also have been associated with patriotic causes, though since aligning with the CCP this has been reduced largely to advocating for unification with Taiwan. Hongmen’s identity has continued to straddle the line between cultural organization and criminal enterprise, as their association with former Macau 14K triad boss Wan Kuok-koi shows. The CCP has turned a blind eye as Hongmen ventures have expanded across One Belt One Road countries, in part because these organizations serve the purposes of united front work. This implicit endorsement of criminal activities that pose a transnational risk could undermine trust in the PRC government along parts of the Belt and Road where Hongmen and related triads are active, especially as it touts its leadership credentials among developing countries.