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Existing literature on flows of China’s private capital and Chinese-origin transnational criminals (COTCs) into Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands tends to portray the problem as a pathology afflicting China equally, or as being beyond China’s control. In contrast, this talk presents cases where there is evidence of a crime-state nexus. We apply Alfred McCoy’s concept of the “covert netherworld”, originally coined in relation to United States covert operations, to a Sinic domain where business, criminal and United Front-affiliated actors interact while pursuing a