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A Chinese woman known as the “Godmother of the underworld” was sentenced to 18 years in jail today for bribery, illegal gambling, and other gang activity. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad has been watching the trial in Beijing.
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MARCO WERMAN: The Mexican city of Juarez may be getting more dangerous but the Chinese city of Chongqing may be getting a little safer. At least that’s the hope of Chinese officials now that a woman described as the godmother of the underworld has been put behind bars. Xie Caiping was sentenced to 18 years today. She was said to have run gambling dens in nightclubs and tea houses and protected drug users and the court concluded that Xie bribed police to turn a blind eye to her crimes. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is monitoring the story from Beijing. This trial captivated a lot of Chinese Mary Kay. What were some of these lurid and sensational details that caught people’s attention?
MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Well first of all there was the personality of Xie herself. You know she came into the court and cussed at the judges. And of course the judge reprimanded her. But you know the people who were watching ate it up. Then there were the totally unsubstantiated reports in some of the Chinese press that she had a stable of 16 young lovers. There’s the fact that her brother-in-law was the deputy chief of police in Chongqing and the former director of the justice department and that he seemed to have facilitated her being able to run these gambling dens. So I think part of it is just the sheer soap opera value of this sort of a trial with this sort of a woman who the Chinese media were portraying as a dragon lady. But then you have to go beyond that and ask why this trial? Because there’s a lot of corruption in China.
WERMAN: Well precisely. I mean Xie is believed to have earned more than two million yuan – or 300,000 dollars. It seems kind of like small change compared to other cases. I mean why would this draw so much attention?
MAGISTAD: Chongqing’s party secretary is Bush e Lai. He’s a very ambitious, media-savvy person who drove this anti-corruption campaign. And he’s been getting a lot of credit in the Chinese media for bringing people like Xie to justice. But I think part of why this is getting so much attention in the state-run media is that it makes the state look good. It makes the government look good. It makes Bush e Lai look good that they’re cracking down on corruption. But it doesn’t actually hurt the interest of people at very senior levels. There have been corruption cases that have been linked to family members of people at very senior levels. And if you try to do a search on the internet for stories about those cases you’ll find that your computer freezes.
WERMAN: When you hear about the mafia or underworld we have images of a certain kind of organized crime. How does the culture of the Godfather compare to what you’re talking about in Chongqing with the godmother?
MAGISTAD: Well I think she ran a much smaller racket than the Godfather of the films. You know she had something like 20 casinos. You know there certainly were some unsavory stories about things that she did in the course of running her businesses. At one point she allegedly hired thugs to beat up an undercover police officer and they ended up stuffing his body in a bag and dumping him in a field. He survived it. Another time, it was said in the court, she was tipped off that there was going to be a raid and she made off with a suitcase full of money. You know she had her ways of making things work for her. I think probably not as much murder and mayhem as in the Italian mafia and in the Godfather films. But you know she kind of tried to hold her own.
WERMAN: She’d put a horse in somebody’s bedroom. But a living horse.
MAGISTAD: [LAUGHS] Perhaps.
WERMAN: The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing. Thank you so much.
MAGISTAD: Thank you Marco.
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