Rising Crime Wave Sparks Fears in Skittish Hong Kong : Asia: China’s takeover in 1997 looms on horizon and lawlessness runs both ways over the border.

Guns, drugs and criminals from Communist China are fueling a crime wave in Hong Kong and many fear that as China’s takeover of 1997 approaches, things could get worse.

“The society seems to be unraveling,” said Charles Chan, a social worker who battles Hong Kong’s growing gang problem. “Before, we always used to have a solution but now there isn’t one.”

Recently, growing rivalry among Hong Kong’s organized crime syndicates, the Triads, left six people dead when three armed men tossed homemade gasoline bombs into a crowded Mah Jong game parlor, setting it ablaze.

Police said Triads were demanding protection money from the Rich View Social Club and Dining Hall.

The growing lawlessness is running both ways over the border. Chinese criminals who flee back home have been untouchable for lack of an extradition agreement, and the Hong Kong crime ring is expanding in nearby Chinese boom towns.

Only recently has the long arm of the law been catching up.

In one recent three-week period, four gangs of men, at least two from mainland China, snatched $2 million worth of jewelry and gold.

Two of the robberies occurred in Hong Kong’s swanky Central District, famed for the Star Ferry Terminal and soaring glass skyscrapers.

In one theft, crooks robbed two jewelry stores of $500,000 in gold and shot their way through the area, taking a 16-year-old girl hostage and killing a passer-by.

Armed robberies numbered 245 in first eight months of this year compared to 260 during all of last year.

Still, the colony remains extraordinarily safe for a metropolis of 5.7 million people. Women walk home alone at night and streets are well-patrolled by police.

But Hong Kong’s crime wave is cresting as its people become increasingly skittish about 1997, when Communist China resumes control of the territory.

China has promised to maintain Hong Kong’s freewheeling economic and social system for 50 years after the takeover. But in interviews, law enforcement officials, social workers and educators paint a grim picture of their hopes for the future.

A marked increase in the use of “soft drugs,” such as marijuana and an amphetamine called Mandrax, which are easily smuggled from China, is affecting the young.

The influence of the Triads is growing, possibly fueled by a sense of helplessness among Hong Kong’s poorer youth about the colony’s future.

Last year for the first time ever, people age 20 or under accounted for more than 40% of the arrests for all violent crimes.

“Triads have entered the schools in a big way,” said Corina Yeung, a social worker in a rough and tumble housing project near Hong Kong’s airport. “Violence, aggression and weapons have become normal fare for school kids.”

“China white,” a potent form of heroin, is also increasingly being moved overland through China to the colony from Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle where it is produced, according to David Hodson, chief of operations of the police department’s narcotics bureau.

The specter of 1997 troubles the police department, reputedly one of the world’s finest. High turnover and a protracted pay dispute caused in part by China’s apparent unwillingness to back the department as the law enforcement agency of Hong Kong after 1997 is hurting the force, officers say.

Changes in China add to the havoc.

Beijing’s decade of economic reform have produced serious social dislocations and corruption, especially in Hong Kong’s neighbor, Guangdong province, the engine of China’s modernization drive.

Hong Kong’s Triads have moved into Guangdong and joined local criminals, pushing drugs, prostitution, gambling, smuggling and other social vices, law enforcement officials say. China’s police appear incapable of dealing with the crime boom and in some cases might contribute to it.

In May, for example, two Hong Kong undercover policemen were abducted by Chinese security officials who sneaked into Hong Kong waters to smuggle three luxury cars to the mainland. The policemen were released only after China’s official New China News Agency accused the Hong Kong government of fabricating the incident. The Chinese officers were apparently not punished.

“There’s no way we can stop smuggling of guns and drugs,” said one senior inspector in the Customs and Excise Department as he watched a Chinese speedboat, apparently carrying smuggled goods, outrace his Customs launch. “It seems like out of every four Chinese officials, at least one is corrupt.”

Connections between Hong Kong’s Triads and Chinese gangs have grown to the point where Triads are bringing illegal Chinese immigrants into the territory to commit crimes. The crooks then sneak back across the territory’s porous border after breaking the law, police say.

Since China does not have an extradition agreement with Hong Kong, this method is safe as long as Beijing declines to help the colony fight crime.

But that help may have begun.

Chinese authorities in Canton recently arrested two men wanted in connection with one of the four recent heists. Hong Kong’s governor, Sir David Wilson, said China is committed to stemming the growing gun-smuggling trade.

And China recently outlawed the use of cigarette boats, the centerpiece of smuggling.

“The cooperation is just starting,” said one senior inspector. “Let’s hope, for Hong Kong’s sake, it continues.”