Globalization,State Autonomy and the Fight against Cross-Border Crime: Greater China's Cooperation with the World

Although globalization has stimulated the rise in cross-border crime, it does not really undermine the autonomy of the mainland Chinese state, the Taiwan state, and the city-states of Hong Kong and Macao. Instead, through cooperation with law-enforcement agencies in other countries, the law-enforcement agencies of these four places, notably the police and customs, have ensured the persistence of state autonomy vis-à-vis cross-border criminal groups and individuals. In the case of Greater China (mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao), interstate cooperation involving the police and customs can maintain state autonomy vis-à-vis criminal groups and individuals. The mechanisms of such interstate and intergovernmental cooperation embrace the sharing of criminal intelligence, the occurrence of anti-crime joint operations, the holding of seminars and conferences, and the administrative arrangements of extraditions. In a nutshell, intergovernmental cooperation in the combat against cross-border crime can maintain state autonomy in the midst of globalization, as the case of Greater China shows.