The phenomenon of the rich, local, ethnic Chinese merchant is hardly new. Bowring reported in the 1850s that the Chinese could be found 'penetrating every creek', working as traders, merchants and moneylenders. Nor is their to operate above the law at all novel. In Samut Prakarn in 1927, a wealthy Chinese merchant, who both a kamnan (local headman) and head of a Chinese secret society (ang-yi), shot dead a policeman and then attempted to grin immunity by bribing officials from the locality up to the minister of the interior himself. In The 1950s it was said that local Chinese businessmen regularly tried to bribe or otherwise compromise senior local officials in order to have a free hand in heir business dealings.