Reading your briefing about corruption and organized crime in China, one is quickly reminded of Baron Acton’s old quip that power corrupts, while absolute power corrupts absolutely (“The Red and the Black,” October 3, 2009). What else would one expect from a country run by a communist party for six full decades? All the attempts by the party itself to stamp out what is dubbed “red-black” collusion between party officials and the underworld are thus doomed to failure. But a careful reading of your article shows that gangs have a long tradition in pre-communist China. The Kuomintang style of party rule depended on gangs like the famous Green Gang in Shanghai or Chongqing’s Robed Brothers. The Sun Yee On triad and the United Bamboo gang still operate in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as China itself. Looking further back, one finds a thriving tradition in organized crime going centuries back. Japanese Yakuza is thus hardly a surprise, for it comes from common cultural roots. To wit, if absolute power corrupts absolutely, this surely has to do with the way China has been ruled for centuries and perhaps even millennia. The communist party in power today is but an outgrowth of the country’s very culture rather than a foreign implant of recent vintage.