Dear Delegates,

Welcome to the Conference on Organized Crime: the Triad Brotherhood. You are now members of one of the world’s most extensive, secretive networks of crime and business.

The Triads is a society whose membership crosses continents. Many would call each group a gang, and they certainly operate outside both domestic and international laws. In practice, however, this group is not dissimilar to an illegitimate, violent multi-national corporation. In the past it has operated as a secret society with largely political goals. Sun Yat-sen, for example, used the Triads to organize his nationalist attacks on Qing Dynasty China. However it is now profit, not ideology, which ties the Triads together.

You delegates will participate in the first meeting of the International Conference of the Triad Brotherhood, set in February 2010. Each pair of you represents the leadership of a particular cell from either China, the United States, or Australia. One delegate is the Dragon Master or Mountain Master (山主), and the other is the Liaison Officer, in charge of intergang relations and recruiting.

This committee will challenge you to make sense of the ambiguous space between state, gang, and business. As the leaders of the Triad network, you must devise methods of international cooperation between groups accustomed to handling their inter-cell relations with violence. This has become necessary due to increased Sino-US crackdown on counterfeiting, one of the Triads’ most important businesses. The financial crisis has led Barack Obama’s administration to sharpen focus on the protection of US intellectual property. Because the Chinese military also earns money by selling counterfeit goods, Hu Jintao’s government is cooperating in an effort to crush competition and monopolize the market of pirated goods. As US allies, the Australians are also contributing to this effort.

Our challenges for the weekend are the following: (1) Develop methods of international cooperation between Triads in order to streamline and perpetuate business, and (2) Create a plan to assess current markets or expand commercial activities into new sectors.

I will be your chair. My name is Elizabeth Lawton. I am a senior in the School of Foreign Service, studying International Politics and Asian Studies. I spent last semester in Beijing. In between classes and model UN, I also work for The Hoya, speak Chinglish, and play Scrabble with unusual enthusiasm. The Director of this committee is superstar freshman Nora Hajjar.

I came to Georgetown largely because of the amazing experience I had as a NAIMUN delegate during my senior year of high school. The rest of the dais and I will do whatever we can to help you have an equally fun, fascinating, and fabulous weekend.

Please feel free to email me any questions that arise between now and February.

Hoya Saxa,

Elizabeth Lawton
Chair, Conference on Organized Crime: The Triad Brotherhood
NAIMUN XLVI
eal39(at)georgetown.edu

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