Transnational Organized Crime: Police Cooperation in China and the EU

Abstract

This article outlines police cooperation strategies that have developed to fight organized crime in both the EU and Greater China. It explores the broadly similar organized crime problems faced within both systems while highlighting some of the major challenges to each. Using a socio-legal approach it compares the informal and formal cooperation mechanisms that have been established to address cross-border organized crime issues. The article uses the extensive literature analyzing the EU context as a framework for assessing the cooperation methods used within Greater China. Finally it uses this analysis to assess the police cooperation measures in place and explains what we can learn about the politics, law and culture of each region from this cooperation. The author contends that while police cooperation in Greater China is less formalized than that of the EU, significant informal cooperation exists which appears similar to how police cooperation started to develop within Europe half a century ago.