Mao's 1949 victory spelled death for the triads in mainland China. Smugglers, dealers, and hardened crooks of all sorts were summarily rounded up and imprisoned; many were simply shot. The Communist takeover of China it is generally agreed, ended the nation's long ordeal with opium addiction. It did not, however, end the triads. Wherever Chiang's Nationalist Army fled, the triads went along, to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and from the south of China into Burma, where they built up the Golden Triangle heroin trade.