From Mules to Managers: The Industrialisation of Illicit Finance in Chinese Transnational Networks

This article maps the complete supply chain of modern Chinese money laundering, analyzing the shift from low-level "mules" to professional "brokers." It contrasts the traditional view of money mules as unwitting victims with the Chinese phenomenon of "Pao Fen" (running points), where "runners" act as willing gig-economy workers. Through a comparative case study of the domestic 'Tian Tian Xiang Shang' (TTXS) and the offshore 'Huione Guarantee'—which alone processed over $16 billion in 2025, representing 20% of global crypto laundering—the paper documents how enforcement pressure compressed margins for low-level runners while simultaneously increasing the profitability and sophistication of high-level brokers. The analysis identifies a cost-negative laundering model, demonstrating that the manager's profit function can operate independently of client fees, sustained by trade-based arbitrage (Daigou) and VAT capture. Drawing on Labour Process Theory and organizational sociology, the article argues that this "industrialisation of laundering" has created a stratified criminal hierarchy where the suppression of the labor force (runners) inadvertently enriches the structural elite (brokers), transforming laundering from a fee-based service into a trade-arbitrage operation.