In Hong Kong, Triads are known to have been long involved in the illegal businesses of drugs, gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, debt collecting and smuggling. Triads are also notorious for organized extortion from legitimate businesses, such as the entertainment industry, street hawking, wholesale markets and minibus services, interior decoration business, the trading of properties, and the film industry. Since Hong Kong Triads are believed to be increasingly active in drug trafficking, human smuggling, and economic organized crime such as credit card fraud, counterfeiting, and money laundering, Western police foresee that Hong Kong Triads are replacing the Italian Mafia as the most powerful criminal organization in the world in the next century. Are these contentions correct? In order to understand what Triads exactly do in different kinds of organized crime, this course is specifically designed to analyse the role of Hong Kong Triads in legal, illegal, and international markets.