China cracks down on cyber scams | Picture: P.A.
Zhang Hongliang, a former restaurant manager in central China, worked various jobs in China and abroad to support his family after losing his job during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March, a job offer to teach Chinese cooking at a restaurant led him into a cyber scam complex in Myanmar, where he was instead ordered to lure Chinese people into giving up their savings for fake food schemes. investment via social media platforms.
Zhang is one of tens of thousands of people, most but not all Chinese, who have been ensnared in cyberscam rings run by powerful Chinese crime syndicates in Southeast Asia. Regional and Chinese authorities have arrested thousands of people in a crackdown, but experts say they are failing to root out local elites and criminal networks that are expected to continue running the schemes.
When fraudulent transactions are disrupted in one location, they often resurface elsewhere. The problem is embarrassing for Beijing and discourages ordinary Chinese from traveling to Southeast Asia for fear of being cheated or kidnapped and involved in a cyber scam operation.
In recent years, media reports have revealed cases of young people lured to places in Cambodia or Myanmar for high-paying jobs, only to be forced to work as con artists. Rescue organizations say people are regularly beaten or subjected to corporal punishment, such as being forced to run laps if they don’t perform well.
In August, China, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar agreed to establish a joint police operations center to combat cyber scams in the region. On October 10, China’s Ministry of Public Security announced that its “summer operation” had successfully brought back 2,317 fraud suspects from northern Myanmar to China.
China considers these people suspicious, although experts say most of them are victims who were forced to work for the criminals. They wonder how they will be treated once they return to China.
Programs based in countries like Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are run by Chinese bosses, hand in hand with local elites. Many are based in places where China has financed large construction projects under leader Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative.
Myanmar’s border regions have long been a magnet for criminals, including drug producers and traffickers, due to lax law enforcement. These places are generally under the control of armed groups belonging to ethnic minorities, opposed or allied to the central government of Myanmar. Some also cooperate with organized crime gangs.
“From the Chinese government’s perspective, it is a source of extreme embarrassment that so many of these Chinese criminals are operating throughout Southeast Asia,” said Jason Tower, a transnational crime expert at the American Institute of Peace.
Syndicates are also known for “pig butchery” scams, where scammers trick individuals, often on the other side of the world, into investing their money in fake schemes after tricking them into digital romances.
Scammers divide their targets into two categories: Chinese and non-Chinese. They use scripts, images of models and influencers, and translation software to trick people they contact by phone or online into parting with their money. Victims can be anywhere in the world.
The criminals “ridden on the shoulders of the Belt and Road Initiative,” said Tower, who highlighted the criminals’ links to Chinese state-owned enterprises, think tanks and government officials in a report of 2020 written for the American Institute of Peace.
Zhang was working in Thailand and seeking a visa for Laos when he met the man who lured him into the Myanmar fraud complex. Giving what he says is his last name, Gao, he claims to be a broker and travel agent for Chinese people living in Thailand. Zhang and his wife wanted more money to pay for in vitro fertilization in order to have another child. Gao suggested he go to work in Myawaddy, in eastern Myanmar’s Kayin State, to teach a local chef how to cook Chinese food at Gao’s new restaurant. The salary would be double what Zhang earned in China.
Zhang was suspicious. Since the 2021 coup, military-controlled Myanmar has been mired in civil conflict. But Gao reassured him that he wouldn’t do anything illegal and said the restaurant would have plenty of customers since many cyber scam businesses were operating in the area.
This could have raised a red flag, but it wasn’t until he arrived in Myanmar that Zhang realized his predicament. He asked to go home, saying there was a family emergency. His family helped him raise some 40,000 yuan ($5,472) to repay the debt Gao claimed he owed him, and he fled one night, swimming across the Moei River to Thailand, where he went to the Thai police, who contacted the police. Chinese Embassy.
Zhang showed the AP copies of his deportation notice from Thai immigration police and a temporary ID card. He returned to China in late June and was questioned by Chinese police but was not arrested. He shares his story on Douyin, China’s version of Tik-Tok, to alert others of the risks and says people often contact him about loved ones trapped in cyberscam schemes.
“We all left with this wonderful feeling of hope, but then reality hit us in the face,” he said.
In total, China has arrested some 4,000 suspects and returned them to China.
The Ministry of Public Security claimed “revolutionary results” thanks to operations carried out in coordination with Myanmar authorities. On Monday, they announced that they had repatriated an additional 2,349 people. The ministry did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
A 31-year-old former chef who was smuggled into Myanmar’s Wa state earlier this year said he saw his company hand over four people to Chinese police without much fanfare in September. Other companies did the same, said the man, who was smuggled into Myanmar and later rescued by a nonprofit. He declined to be named for fear of government reprisals, and The Associated Press could not independently verify his account.
Overall, the coercive measures do not seem very comprehensive, experts say. The groups now based in Myanmar were originally located in Cambodia. When Cambodia cracked down on illegal online gambling rings and casinos in 2019, many groups simply moved to less well-policed locations in Myanmar. Some were taken over by rival gangs.
China’s efforts to improve its image have so far not made much progress, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University.
“You can suppress these symptoms and the manifestations that you can see in the border areas,” he said, “but they will come back unless you make a really sustained effort.”
