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【中文标题】崩牙驹与新澳门
【原文标题】Broken Tooth and New Macau
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】BENJAMIN CARLSON
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/28/broken_tooth_and_new_macau_gambling_china
中国如何打击黑恶势力，建立一个新的世界赌博麦加。
澳门最恶名昭彰的歹徒现在的感觉一定像瑞普•凡•温克尔一样。（译者注：华盛顿•欧文所著《见闻札记》中的一短篇故事主人公，他在卡茨基尔山沉睡了20年，醒来后发现世界完全变了。）
尹国驹人称崩牙驹，当57岁的他度过14年监狱生涯，在12月1日刑满释放的时候，整个城市完全变化了。街道上再也看不见燃烧的汽车，悬挂澳门和中国两地牌照的宾利缓慢行驶在新建成的高速公路上。曾经的那座令人昏昏欲睡、破烂不堪、闭塞的殖民地城市已经一去不返，取而代之的是世界赌博之都，其年赌博业收入达到拉斯维加斯的5倍。在十年多一点点的时间里，澳门变得平静、整洁、同时暴富了。这位澳门曾经最大、最恐怖的犯罪团体14K的头目在获释两个月之后，似乎没有引起任何关注。崩牙驹在宣誓“绝不会”再次危害澳门的和平之后，彻底过上了隐居的生活。有当地媒体报道未经证实的消息，在中国当局的安排下，他自愿被放逐到泰国和香港几个月。
1988年，尹被捕之前一个月，他说：“得罪过我的人一个也跑不掉，我不会杀他们，我会让他们自己到另一个世界去。”现在，他说他只想做一个守法的公民，所有恩怨已经都是往事了。尹在接受《南华早报》采访时，局促不安地说：“我不想危害澳门的稳定，我绝不会做这些事，我想过自己的日子。”
这不是曾经傲视一切的崩牙驹，而是一个顺应时代的尹国驹。1998年，尹是澳门公认的犯罪之王，当时澳门处于葡萄牙殖民统治即将结束的混乱时期。就像40年代拉斯维加斯的巴格斯•西格尔（译者注：与卡帮齐名的赌城犯罪头目），他以狂妄的暴力、凶残和野心著称。尹的外号来源于年轻时的一次车祸，门牙被磕掉一半（后来镶齐）。在黑社会打拼的日子里，他两次中弹，还躲过一次切肉刀的袭击，但是付出了两支手指不能动弹的代价。在90年代，他开着兰博基尼在澳门街道上招摇过市，大肆吹嘘一场赌博就输掉100万美元。1998年，他在接受《新闻周刊》采访时，宣称手下有1万名黑帮分子。当他因放高利贷和洗黑钱的罪名被捕时，据说他正在观看1998年的影片《濠江风云》。这是他出资拍摄描写他自己犯罪生涯的影片。（似乎与罗伯特•德尼罗的同名影片并无关联（译者注：两部影片的英文名同为Casino）。）
在澳门被移交给中国之前几年，黑帮暴力活动愈演愈烈，每个人都在争夺葡萄牙人离开之后留下的权力空白。最高峰是在澳门回归的1999年，那一年有42人死于帮派火拼。崩牙驹的手下焚烧汽车，还涉嫌在葡京赌场附近杀死一名葡萄牙官员。在尹的迪厅里，据说有一个身穿警服的人体模特，用绳索悬挂在天花板上。
葡萄牙在某种程度上算是一个不大情愿的殖民者，在它的统治下，澳门这座城市显得死气沉沉、经济低迷。在遭受黑帮犯罪和亚洲金融危急双重打击之下，澳门的GDP在1998年下降了6.8％。为了奉行它在70年代开始的去殖民地化政策，葡萄牙多次要求把澳门归还给中国，但北京直到1999年才同意接收。在权力移交期间，澳门的经济以纺织业为主，小规模的赌博产业基本上都被何鸿燊掌控。何在澳门被视为一个劣迹斑斑、脾气古怪的家长——一个混合了霍华德•休斯和唐纳德•特朗普形象的人物。据说在二战期间，他有一次独身一人击败了试图抢夺他老板船只的海盗，他生意的发迹就起源于这个行为所获得的奖励。
哪里也比不上葡京赌场今昔明显的对比，那曾经是何的地标级产业，也是这个城市最古老的标志性赌场。崩牙驹就经常在这里出没。据说尹在葡京赌场VIP房间里常备5000万美元赌注，1998年他就是在赌场酒店的房间中被捕。当时，这座像一个五彩的洋葱一样的破旧赌场外，整整一个营的武装警察手持自动武器严密把守。今天，自动武器早已无影无踪，赌场经过翻新，呈现出一个巨大、绚丽的金色莲花形状。大厅里，游客挨挨挤挤地在一个实物大小的房子模型前照相。（见不得人的一面依然存在：葡京地下室的通道里，一群妓女在餐厅和水果摊前走来走去。）
2002年，澳门政府打破了何对赌博业的垄断，把整个产业向国际开放。6家外国运营商得到了赌场营业资质，其中包括拉斯维加斯大亨史蒂夫•韦恩和共和党资助者、拉斯维加斯金沙集团首席执行官谢尔登•阿德尔森。（何的势力依然强大，他拥有澳门34家赌场中的17家。）北京还放松了大陆游客到澳门旅游的限制，期望在2003年非典之后振兴当地的经济。但即使如此，澳门的发展前景依然未卜。
当时，这座城市的未来发展非常不被看好，全球最大的游戏公司凯撒娱乐首席执行官加利•洛夫曼拒绝染指澳门娱乐业——这成为他所犯下的最大的一个错误。1998年，80万大陆游客进入澳门，到2011年，这个数字是1600万。作为唯一一个合法经营赌博业的中国城市，澳门对于新富阶层和中产人士有着难以拒绝的吸引力。2012年，赌博业收入达到380亿美元。回归之后，澳门最大的变化是暴力犯罪行为基本消失了。接手澳门之后，中国立即派出人民解放军卫戍部队驻扎在当地。不到一年时间里，暴力犯罪数量下降了46％。这其中部分原因在于崩牙驹被捕，以及中国军队的震慑力，但更重要的原因是，黑社会发现帮助维持和平可以获得更大收益。
黑帮们找到了一个新工作，就是掌控澳门的“迭码仔”业，即把出手阔绰的赌客带到澳门，同时帮助赌场收回债务。这样的生意，还能让VIP客户下5万美元以上的赌注，这个数字是中国人每年带出国家的现金法律上限。（简单来说，迭码仔在中国边境收取客户的现金，然后在澳门贷款给这些人赌博。）这样的安排让洗钱变得很方便。香港警务处刑事情报科前主管韦启贤说，他知道“所有的迭码仔从业者都与黑社会有关”。
尽管崩牙驹的被捕给他的黑帮组织14K沉重的打击，但澳门的帮派活动和前帮派成员依然活跃。8月份，6个据说与黑帮有关联的人挥舞棍棒攻击吴文新——崩牙驹被捕前的老对头。在他被释放前一个星期，警方以谋杀未遂的罪名逮捕了崩牙驹的前得力助手。
Ricardo Pinto是葡萄牙出版商，在90年代报道过有关黑帮的新闻。他说：“所有人都知道帮派活动依然活跃，现在他们都在法律允许的范围内做事，当然很大程度上改变了自身的形象……他们现在更像是商人，他们给社会带来了和平，用守法的方式融入澳门社会。”
这并不是说黑帮完全放弃了犯罪活动。根据美国国会图书馆的一份有关中国犯罪组织的报告，纵观全世界，在贩毒、卖淫、金融欺诈、软件盗版、高利贷和贩卖人口等活动中，犯罪集团依然扮演着重要的角色。
澳门大学公共管理系教授仇国平说：“之所以会出现迭码仔产业，是因为这些人非常了解赌场生意。赌场经营方不关心他们用什么方法来吸引一掷千金的赌客，这其中有些人也是外国的黑帮成员。”
迭码仔的生意有时候会导致远离公众视线的暴力犯罪。7月份，两名大陆赌客在一家五星级酒店被刀刺死，原因是无力偿还高额的赌债。同月，一位持有日本护照的中国女性被发现在住处被棍棒打死。澳门警方认为两起事件都与迭码仔和黑帮有关，目前还未抓获犯罪嫌疑人。
在当地人看来，澳门的迅猛发展也并非都是好事。潮水般涌入的游客和外国资金推升了房地产价格，自2004年以来，价格已经上涨了400％。交通和环境日益恶化。居民认为政府在推动经济发展过程中根本没有考虑他们的感受。
澳门大学社会学家郝志东说：“像中国一样，澳门已经变成了世界上最赚钱的地方。”实际上，很多人都开始怀念葡萄牙的统治，尽管存在崩牙驹和暴力犯罪。很多人说，这座城市开始变得腐败，只关注赌博，对公民的政治诉求无动于衷。
尽管崩牙驹作为土皇帝的时代已经一去不返，但当他回到澳门时，或许会发现这里和90年代一样有机会发大财。虽然数百万美元的财产被政府没收，但他出狱后的社会关系依然存在。其中包括他的弟弟尹国雄，他专门为赌场制作员工的服装，利润客观。当地媒体报道了一条未经证实过的消息，说崩牙驹的老朋友和老对手们决定送给他一个重返社会的礼物，以庆祝他金盆洗手：迭码仔生意的股份。尽管失去了尖齿利爪，但圈子还是那个圈子。
原文：
How China crushed the triad gangs and created the world's new gambling Mecca.
MACAU — One of Macau's most infamous gangsters must be feeling like Rip Van Winkle.
When Wan Kuok-koi, 57, better known as Broken Tooth, was released from prison on Dec. 1, nearly 14 years after he went behind bars, he emerged to a city utterly transformed. Instead of cars burning in the streets, Bentleys with dual Macau-China license plates prowl newly built highways. Gone is the sleepy, rough-around-the-edges colonial backwater, supplanted by a city that has become the gaming capital of the world, with more than five times the annual gambling revenue of Las Vegas. In a little more than a decade, Macau has calmed down, cleaned up, and gotten immensely rich. And now, nearly two months after being freed, the former leader of 14K, Macau's biggest and most-feared criminal triad, has barely made a ripple. After vowing there was "absolutely no way" he would disturb the peace in Macau, Broken Tooth seems to have gone into hiding, with local media reporting a rumor that he exiled himself to Thailand or Hong Kong for several months as part of an agreement with Chinese authorities.
One month before he was arrested in 1998, Wan said that "anyone who's done something bad to me will never escape. I won't kill him. I'll make him take a voyage to another world." Now he says he simply wants to become a law-abiding citizen, and that revenge is a thing of the past. "I don't want to affect the stability of Macau. There's absolutely no way I want to do that. I want to be left alone," a bashful-sounding Wan said to the Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper the South China Morning Post.
It's a far cry from the swaggering Broken Tooth of old, but one that fits the times. In 1998, Wan was the irrepressible criminal king of Macau, then a Portuguese colony in its tumultuous last days. Like Bugsy Siegel in 1940s Las Vegas, he had a reputation for violence, ruthlessness, and ambition that approached megalomania. Wan earned his nickname as a young man after crashing his car and damaging his teeth. (He later had them capped.) As he rose through the triad ranks, he was shot twice and survived an attack from a meat cleaver that rendered two fingers permanently immobile. In the 1990s, he drove a purple Lamborghini and bragged about losing more than $1 million at a single gambling session. In an interview with Newsweek in 1998, he claimed to have 10,000 triad followers. And at the time of his arrest for loan sharking and money laundering, he was said to be watching the 1998 movie Casino, an autobiographical film he commissioned to dramatize his criminal exploits (not, it seems, connected to the Robert De Niro film of the same name).
In the years leading up to Macau's handover to China, triad violence surged as gangs vied for a bigger share of the pie that would be left after Portuguese power receded. The high point was 1999, the year of the handover, when 42 people died in gang-related attacks. Broken Tooth's triad torched cars and was believed to have killed a Portuguese gambling official near the Casino Lisboa. At Wan's disco, Heavy Club, a mannequin dressed in a police uniform reportedly dangled from a noose tied to the ceiling.
Under Portugal, a somewhat reluctant colonial power, the city had a sleepy air and a sluggish economy to match: a combination of triad violence and the Asian financial crisis caused Macau's gross domestic product to contract by 6.8 percent in 1998. Portugal repeatedly tried to return Macau to China as part of its 1970s decolonization push, but Beijing refused to retake sovereignty until 1999. At the time of the handover, textile manufacturing dominated Macau's economy, and the relatively small casino industry was controlled entirely by Stanley Ho. Seen in Macau as a sort of roguish, eccentric patriarch -- part Howard Hughes, part Donald Trump -- Ho allegedly earned the money to start his first business as a reward for single-handedly defeating pirates who attacked an employer's ship during World War II.
Nowhere is the contrast between then and now more apparent than in the Lisboa, Ho's landmark property and one of the city's oldest and most iconic casinos. It was also Broken Tooth's old haunt. Wan allegedly had a $50 million stake in a VIP room at the Casino Lisboa and was arrested in a suite at its hotel back in 1998. Then, the casino -- a tacky structure resembling a multicolored onion -- was guarded by a battalion of cops wielding automatic weapons. Today, the automatic weapons are gone, the casino has expanded with an enormous, glitzy addition shaped like a golden lotus flower, and the lobby is filled with tourists elbowing each other to pose in front of a life-sized gingerbread house. (The seamier side remains: A basement hallway below the Lisboa has a parade of prostitutes perpetually cat-walking between a restaurant and a fruit stand.)
In 2002, the Macau government broke Ho's monopoly on gaming and opened it up to international players. It granted six casino licenses to foreign operators, including Las Vegas mogul Steve Wynn and GOP-bankroller and Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson. (Ho remains a powerhouse; he owns 17 of Macau's 34 casinos.) Beijing also loosened restrictions on mainland tourists coming to visit Macau, in an effort to boost the economy after the SARS epidemic struck China in 2003. And yet Macau's success was far from a sure bet.
The outlook for the city at the time was still murky enough that Gary Loveman, CEO of the world's largest gaming company, Caesars Entertainment Corporation, gave Macau a pass -- a decision he has since called his worst mistake. In 1998, 800,000 mainlanders visited Macau. In 2011, it was 16 million. As the only Chinese territory where casino gambling is legal, Macau has an irresistible allure to the newly rich and the middle class alike. In 2012, gambling revenues reached $38 billion. But one of the most striking changes after the handover was an end to the violence that had plagued the territory. Immediately after regaining sovereignty, China set up a garrison of the People's Liberation Army in Macau. Within a year, violent crime had dropped 46 percent. This was due partly to the jailing of Broken Tooth and the presence of China's military. But much of it is because it's more profitable for triads to help keep the peace.
Triads get a piece of this new action by dominating the "junket" industry of Macau, which brings high-rolling gamblers to the territory and collects debts on behalf of the casinos. These businesses also allow VIPs to stake more than the $50,000 legal limit on how much money Chinese are permitted to take out of the country every year. (In essence, junkets collect their clients' money on the Chinese side of the border and give them loans to gamble on the Macau side.) This scheme makes a convenient vehicle for money laundering. Steve Vickers, Hong Kong's former chief of the Criminal Intelligence Bureau, has said that he knows of "no Chinese junket operator that doesn't have some association with triads."
Although Broken Tooth's conviction dealt his old triad, 14K, a heavy blow, the gang remains active in Macau, as do his former associates. In August, six men with alleged triad ties, wielding hammers and sticks, attacked Ng Man-sun, one of Broken Tooth's bitterest former rivals. And one week before his release, police arrested Broken Tooth's former right-hand man for attempted murder.
"Everyone realizes that triads are still active," says Ricardo Pinto, a Portuguese publisher who covered the triads as a journalist in the 1990s. "Now they are working in a kind of legal framework, which of course changes very much the perception of their activities.... Now they are behaving more like normal businessmen. They made peace with society and joined Macau by operating in a legal way."
That is not to say that triads have given up on crime, of course. Around the world, these crime syndicates continue to be major players in drug trafficking, prostitution, financial fraud, software piracy, loan sharking, and human smuggling, according to a Library of Congress report on Chinese criminal organizations.
"Junkets are allowed to operate because they are good for the business of casinos," says Bill Chou, professor of public administration at the University of Macau. "The casino license holder does not care how they go about attracting the high rollers, who are sometimes also the gangsters in other parts of the world." He says that junkets are seen as more or less mainstream businesses, though most "are still controlled by gangsters."
The junket trade can still lead to some occasionally violent attacks that take place out of the public eye. In July, two mainland gamblers were stabbed to death in a five-star hotel after failing to pay up on large gambling losses. That same month, a Chinese woman with a Japanese passport was found bludgeoned to death in a residential area. Macau police believe both crimes are tied to junket operators and triads. Both murders remain unsolved.
For locals, Macau's rapid changes have not all been positive. The flood of tourists and foreign money has driven up the price of real estate by more than 400 percent since 2004. Traffic and pollution have worsened. And residents say the government has all but ignored their concerns in the drive for breakneck economic growth.
"Like China, Macau has become one of the most money-making places in the world," says Hao Zhidong, a sociologist at the University of Macau. In fact, he says, many people have actually become nostalgic for Portuguese rule -- Broken Tooth and the years of violence notwithstanding. Many say the city has become too venal, too focused on gambling, and too indifferent to the political demands of its citizens.
Even though Broken Tooth's days as a kingpin may be over, whenever he returns from exile, he may find Macau almost as congenial a place to make money as in the 1990s. While he lost millions of dollars in property due to police confiscations after his arrest, he has emerged from prison with many connections intact, including his brother, Wan Kuok-hung, who built a profitable business supplying uniforms to the casinos. Local newspapers have even reported a rumor going around -- that Broken Tooth's old friends and rivals have decided to give him a welcome-back present: a share of the lucrative junket business in exchange for hanging up his gun. Defanged, perhaps, but not out of business.
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狗仔卡
发表于 2013-2-1 09:47
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