Governance Fragmentation and Organized Crime in China: Collective Efficacy, Criminal Embeddedness, and Grassroots Control

Abstract

This study examines governance-related patterns reflected in prosecuted organized crime cases within a municipal jurisdiction in China during the nationwide anti-gang campaign. Drawing on 95 finalized criminal judgments collected from China Judgments Online, the study analyzes governance fragmentation, collective efficacy, organizational persistence, and governance infiltration in judicially processed organized crime cases. The judicial documents were manually coded according to governance-related variables informed by criminological theory, and intercoder reliability was assessed using percent agreement and Cohen’s kappa.

The findings show that organized criminal groups frequently appeared in jurisdictions characterized by weaker informal social control, fragmented governance coordination, and limited public participation. Longer organizational persistence also appeared to be associated with higher levels of criminal activity and greater local embeddedness. The analysis further suggests that campaign-style anti-gang enforcement may produce visible short-term enforcement outcomes while remaining associated with broader structural governance limitations.

Because court judgments represent selectively detected and prosecuted cases, the findings are interpreted as descriptive associations rather than causal relationships. The article contributes to organized-crime research and Asian criminology by showing how grassroots organized crime in China may become embedded in local social relations, grassroots political structures, and overlapping formal and informal mechanisms of social control.