Why China moved so quickly to execute 11 members of a notorious mafia family

No-one should be surprised that China has swiftly executed the 11 members of an organised crime family from north-eastern Myanmar who were sentenced to death in September. China executes more people than anywhere else in the world, according to human rights groups – the exact figure is a state secret. Officials are often executed for corruption. The accusations made against the Ming family were far more serious.

The Ming, Bau, Wei and Liu clans have dominated the remote border town of Laukkaing in Myanmar's impoverished Shan state, since 2009. They rose to power after General Min Aung Hlaing, the current coup leader in Myanmar, led a military operation to drive out the MNDAA, the ethnic insurgent army which had dominated Laukkaing and the area around it since the 1980s.

The four families, as they became known, took over and began shifting from the old dependence on opium and methamphetamine production to a new economy based on casinos and, eventually, online fraud.

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