Koury 1

Camaron Koury

Professor Gardiakos

ENC1102

20 September 2020

Full Draft for Genre and Intertextuality

The article I chose to perform an analysis on is “The rise of the Red Mafia in

China: a case study organized crime and corruption in Chongqing” by Peng Weng.

The genre this is under is crime, I picked this genre because crime in general is one

of my biggest interest, I am actually planning on perusing a job in criminal justice.

The social context of this article is the crimes of the Red Mafia, it explains in depth

what they do, where they do it and how they are able to do these crimes in

Chongqing. Throughout the article you can specifically see the crimes this

organization has committed and still are to this day, this is why this genre would be

crime and would be a highly important to the discourse community. The discourse

community would also value this article a lot more because it talks about specific

members of the organization and the power they have. The article begins with an

introduction of the crime in china while adding in the importance that government

and high position members were also involved in these crimes. It goes into specific

details about who specifically was in the Red Mafia and what they do as far as
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their criminal activity and how devastating it is for the community where they

conduct these crimes in. The discourse community for this article would be

individuals interested in crime but individuals who want to dig deeper, it would be

a discourse community of people who are knowledgeable of the Red Mafia itself

and want to learn more and talk about it. The Red Mafia isn’t a common Mafia that

most individuals are familiar with, usually it’s the basic Mafias that people know

of such as the Mafia Al Capone was in and ran. This Mafia is also almost all

organized and conducted in Chongqing China, this not a popular location you

know by name. This would mean the group in this discourse community would be

familiar with the location. The values and goals of the members is to put an end to

the crimes of the Red Mafia in china because throughout the whole article it

explains the terrible actions of these people and the danger they put other people’s

lives in danger. They also would want to learn more about this mafia, it explains in

detail what they do, who they work for and many other specific details. The layout

of this article is very well done and organized. Penn Weng included specific details

and facts to help the reader understand the Red Mafia. The article is set up to

inform the reader as much as possible but also keep the reader intrigued to keep

reading. Penn added multiple charts to help the reader visually see the crime

activities of this mafia and actually be able to view the way the leadership works in

the mafia with names. The genre follows the organization of a basic essay,
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introduction, body and ending but it goes into extreme detail in each section. It

begins with the explaining of what the Red Mafia is, who they are, what they do

and where they originated from. This is to help readers get a better grasp on the

mafia. It then leads into more detail of what they do and begins to introduce names

of individuals in the mafia with the power they had. The article would explain the

notorious crimes they conducted and took part in. Later on, Peng would add

diagrams of the branches of the mafias and the crimes they commit, a lot of people

are visual learners, so this helped understand the rules. Throughout the whole

entire article Peng included key words at the bottom of each page, this helps the

discourse community and the readers be engaged in the article. The genre has

almost all the facts of the Red Mafia. It has the begging of this group all they way

to 2012 (that is when it was published). The discourse community would be able to

have full knowledge of the Red Mafia after reading this article. This genre also

includes cited evidence on every page and sources. Peng states the paper is mainly

based of publications of official crime documents and academic papers about the

Red Mafia. The word choice Peng uses are very high level and very much in detail.

This paper has many evidence cites through the text to show the details are real.

The word choice used is very familiar with terms revolving around the Red Mafia

and crime. The reason for this is because the average person is not going to read an

article as in details as this about the Red Mafia. Even if the reader is interested in
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crime the Red Mafia usually isn’t the top choice for them. This means for the

reader to read through this article they will be familiar with the word choice and

names used. Especially this discourse community would be very well familiarized

with this word choice. Peng wasn’t writing this for the average person to learn

about crime, he wrote it to the audience who would be familiar with the Red Mafia.

The genre of this crime works to get valuable and credible information to the

discourse community in many ways. To begin with, it has very detailed and well-

done facts about the Red Mafia. Every detail stated has facts backing it up to make

it credible. It goes into depth of where and how it originated. It also includes the

crimes they commit, how they set them up and how it gets let happen under their

power. This paper also gets things done in the discourse community by having

everything cited with links of this information provided at the end of each page. It

helps the members of the discourse community to be able to explore more on a

certain topic about the Red Mafia but also allows them to have a credible source to

use in their future talking or even their own papers. Well done diagrams are

included also so the community can have an organized and detailed visual to use in

their meetings. After going through many of the sources listed, I was able to

narrow it down to what I thought was the best ones and had the best impact. The

first source I chose was about Ex-Chinese official members being executed for

being in the Red Mafia and allowing crimes to happen. Peng included this because
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he wanted the readers to realize the members in this mafia weren’t your average

criminal you would think of, these were well educated government officials who

were leaders in the Red Mafia. These members wouldn’t look any different than

the average upper-class Chinese man but would be involved in drug trafficking,

prostitution, murder and much more terrible crimes. Peng used this to prove his

claim that government members are involved in this mafia. The next source I chose

was from China Daily and reported on a gang boss in the Red Mafia, this is a news

source that is in China and very well informed of the activity and crimes of the

group. The reason why this was added was to show how terrible these men really

were and what they did. You were able to get a real report of the crimes that were

committed, some of the members and again, government members who were also

involved. In this case it was police officers. This contributes to Peng’s claim of

these criminals being notorious and having high power positions. The final source I

chose was from Time Magazine. This was added to show how big this group really

is and how much power they have. The Red Mafia has at least one member in

every high position job, members in prisons, members in the government and not

to mention the hundreds of police officers they bribe. The Red Mafia terrorizes the

community in Chongqing mainly, but they have spread all over China. Each source

contributes to the conversation in its own special way. The first one made it clear

that the some of the members of this group have very high-power jobs and are not
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your average criminal. This helps the conversation by bringing up the topic of who

the members are and brining in the idea that the government in China could be

filled with Red Mafia members. The next source contributes to the conversation by

bringing in specific members, what they did and pictures of them. This helps the

discussion be able to see what some of the members actually looked like so they

can talk about what makes them stand out if there’s anything significant. The third

source would contribute to the discussion by the location of the Red Mafia and the

community that suffers from this group. This would bring up the talk of what it

would be like to actually live in Chongqing. Every single source cited helped Peng

support his writing. Each one brought more specific details on the Red Mafia and

more insight on them. It helped back up everything that was stated through the

article from how the Red Mafia started, what it meant to the members and what

they did. Peng used these sources very well, but I would’ve used more information

in the second source about the gang boss and the activities. He didn’t include much

about what exactly they did, it was very graphic though so that may be why. I also

would’ve added photos of some of the members especially the ones that were

caught in high position jobs. In all, the article itself was a great piece and very

informing. The discourse community would have defiantly learned new

information after reading this and talking it over after.

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Work cited:

Wang, Peng. “The Rise of the Red Mafia in China: a Case Study of Organised Crime and
Corruption in Chongqing.” Trends in Organized Crime, vol. 16, no. 1, 2012, pp. 49–73.,
doi:10.1007/s12117-012-9179-8. 

Chang E (2010) Ex-Chinese offical executed for corruption’, (updated 7 July 2010)
<http://www.cnn.com/ 2010/WORLD/asiapcf/07/07/china.execution/index.html >,

Ma, W, Wang H (2010) Gang boss gets life in jail, (updated 13 April 2010)
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-04/13/content_9719309.htm>,

Ramzy A (2010) China’s dark city: behing Chongqing’s crime crackdown, (updated 15 March
2010) <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1969642,00.html>,

Porter, James. Intertextuality and the Discourse Community. 1986, williamwolff.org/wp-

content/uploads/2013/09/Porter-Intertextuality-and-Discourse-Community.pdf.