In 2025, for the first time, the National Crime Agency identified Chinese organised crime as the foremost non-British organised crime threat to the UK.
The past few decades have seen an explosion of Chinese organised crime around the world, driven by the strength of China’s economy, Chinese emigration, and the global trade and investment initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative.
In the UK, irregular migration and labour exploitation are closely linked to Chinese organised crime, as they create the economic basis for an unregulated shadow economy.
The tragic death of 58 Chinese migrants in a lorry in Dover in 2000, and of 23 whilst picking cockles in Lancashire in 2004, highlighted the plight of those involved in this shadow economy, which undermines law and order, competition and fairness in the labour market, and puts lives and human rights at risk.
This shadow economy is not small: between 2004 and 2016, the Home Office returned more than 40,000 illegal migrants to China. Various estimates claim there may be 2-5 times that number remaining in the UK illegally, although no solid data exists. Clearly, more research is needed.
More recently, investigative research by journalists and law enforcement operations worldwide have highlighted two important dynamics relating to Chinese organised crime.
One is the role of Chinese groups in money laundering, including for and in cooperation with other ethnic organised crime groups. The other is a pattern of connectivity linking organised crime to the Chinese Communist Party. Striking case studies of this can be seen in Italy, Canada, and across Southeast Asia.
There is also some evidence of this in the UK. In Spring 2026, UKCT will publish a series of cutting-edge investigations exposing this evidence.
In the past, Chinese officials and politicians have on a few occasions referred publicly to a desire to build ties with groups such as the Hong Kong Triads, sometimes with reference to the United Front framework whereby the CCP seeks to encourage ‘patriotism’ amongst non-CCP Chinese individuals, organisations and entities, including abroad.
This phenomenon merits further study.
UKCT also examines exchange and co-operation, or the lack thereof, between law enforcement in the UK and China.
The rise of internet-based scams and the flight of wealth and wealthy indivduals out of China, since 2016 especially, has increased the potential scope of co-operation.
However, this is complicated by the dramatic decline of relations between the CCP and the UK.
All in all, this is one of the least studied significant aspects of UK-China ties, and UKCT is determined to promote education and research into it.
