Establishing Trust in the Illegal Wildlife Trade in China

Abstract

This study focusses on the role of trust in the illegal distribution of protected wildlife in China. This research attempts to contribute to the literature by disentangling the establishment of trust within the illegal wildlife trade based on ethnographic fieldwork between 2011 and 2016. Both traders and consumers are resorting to mechanisms of trust to foster exchange and to increase credibility of their agreements. This study discusses the existence of such mechanisms of trust within wildlife trafficking networks that are rather characteristic of illegal wildlife trade in China.

Differentiating criminal networks in the illegal wildlife trade: organized, corporate and disorganized crime

“…While there are numerous examples of criminal networks with a high degree of opportunism and low level of organization, well-organized forms of corporate and organized crime involved in wildlife trafficking do actively and structurally commit wildlife crimes. The latter category correlates with a high degree of corruption as well as links with other serious crimes such as drug trafficking (South and Wyatt 2011;Wyatt 2011;van Uhm 2019;van Uhm and Wong 2019). The trafficking of live protected non-human animals is regularly connected to legal enterprises as part of corporate crime groups because skills and knowledge of those specific species are required to keep them alive during the illegal activities, while banned processed items (e.g.…”

“…Another example is the possibility to launder illegally sourced caviar through aquaculture operations of sturgeons. Wild-caught sturgeons for breeding purposes are not released or caviar from wild sturgeons will be shipped as having been produced in fish farms (Jahrl 2013;van Uhm and Siegel 2016). The latter example reflects the overlap between corporate crime and organized crime as some of the official directors of the current sturgeon farms in Russia were the 'big fishes' in the illegal trade in caviar in the post-Soviet period (van Uhm and Siegel 2016).…”

Taking a lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic: Preventing the future outbreaks of viral zoonoses through a multi-faceted approach

“…By joining this agreement, the participants are obliged to implement its provisions. However, illegal trade in wildlife is widespread, and it is among the most profitable of illegal activities, comparable to the trade of weapons, trafficking or distribution of narcotic drugs ( Izzo, 2010 ; van Uhm and Wong, 2019 ); its annual value is over 20 billion USD ( van Uhm and Wong, 2019 ). Its consequences, however, are undesirable and harmful and affect both local and global health as well as economic costs.…”

“…Among them, the Chatuchak weekend market in Bangkok (Thailand) is a place of especially intensive trade in various wild animals or/and their parts (often endangered and threatened species such as tigers Panthera tigris L., Asian bears and rhinos). This place is also a source of distribution of wild animals and their parts to almost every region of the world ( van Uhm and Wong, 2019 ; Veríssimo et al, 2012 ; Wyatt et al, 2020 ). At the same time, research into illegal wildlife trade in the region, and especially in China, is scarce ( Petrossian et al, 2016 ; van Uhm, 2016a , van Uhm, 2016b ; van Uhm and Wong, 2019 ; Wong, 2015a , Wong, 2015b ).…”

Studying Illegal Online Trades in Plants: Market Characteristics, Organisational and Behavioural Aspects, and Policing Challenges

“…Despite this increasing attention, in a criminological context in which the illegal trade in wild animals (and animal parts, such as ivory) has been increasingly under the spotlight over the last decade (see, among others, Wyatt 2013; Moreto and Lemieux 2015;Sollund 2015Sollund , 2019Gore et al 2016;van Hum 2018;Moreto and Pires 2018;van Uhm and Wong 2018;Wong 2019), plant crimes have so far been comparably under investigated, with the global illegal trade in plants continuing to receive relatively little attention-an issue that has been described as "plant blindness" (see Wandersee and Schussler 1999;Balding and Williams 2016;Margulies et al 2018). The main exception to this blindness is timber, probably because of the superior monetary value of its trade, as well as the visible impact of logging on forested ecosystems which can prompt ecological justice-led attention (White 2008;Cao 2017;Margulies et al 2019), giving visibility to the (lack of) health of the biosphere and to the conflictual relationship between social and ecological interests vs market liberalism and economic growth (Baxter 2005;White 2008).…”