The very popular book Once Upon a Time in Northeast China, Underworld Stories in 20 Years traces the development of a particular Chinese gang from a small group of gangsters into a mafia in the real sense. If they, as gangs, only disrupted social order before, now as mafia, they have become malignant tumors in the social fabric and seriously affected the normal functioning of a society. This article sheds some light on the causes for organized crime to become rampant.