This is damn interesting.

Respectable heads of state rarely admit to keeping company with gangsters.

But in April 1927, about 15 years after the collapse of the last imperial dynasty, Chang Kai Sheck and China were at a crossroads.

Chang had followed a murky path to leadership of the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang.

Although the Kuomintang was rivaled by an assortment of warlords who ruled the provinces as their personal fiefdoms,

in Chang's mind, the greatest obstacle between him and control of that vast and war-torn country

was a young communist party, which, he believed, would soon be nothing but lethal trouble.

So generally Simo Chang turned to Du Yousong of the infamous green

gang of Shanghai, a criminal brotherhood rooted in equal parts menace and Merck. Do was the leader of

this criminal enterprise, and the bloated, gleaming international city lived and died by his word.

It was the power of death which most interested Chang that spring.

He wanted nothing less than complete power over all of China,

and to get it, he was willing to trade the lives of thousands

and allow the establishment of a vast narcotics empire.

Others might have balked at trading the murder of a few thousand political opponents for this goal,

but neither Du nor Chang felt any such hesitation.

Duya Shung's life began in misery.

Before it was all over, it would take him through unspeakable power, obscene wealth, international infamy, and final obscurity.

At the time of his birth in August 1888, the Manchurian Qing dynasty, China's last imperial government,

was rapidly waning and Doe's birthplace witnessed one of the Qing's greatest humiliations.

As the Qing's power failed throughout the 19th century, foreign colonizing powers embarked on a series of wars to seize as much Chinese

territory as they could get their hands on. Among them were the United Kingdom, France, Italy,

...