BANGKOK. Zhang Hongliang, a former restaurant manager in central China, resorted to various jobs both in and outside of China to support his family after losing his job during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March, a job offer that promised to teach Chinese cooking at a restaurant took him to a cyber scam compound in Myanmar. Instead of teaching culinary skills, he found himself ordered to deceive fellow Chinese citizens into surrendering their savings for phony investment schemes via social media platforms.
Zhang is just one among tens of thousands of individuals, predominantly but not exclusively Chinese, who have been ensnared in cyber scam networks operated by powerful Chinese criminal syndicates in Southeast Asia. While regional and Chinese authorities have apprehended thousands in their crackdown, experts assert that they are failing to eradicate the local elites and criminal networks likely to perpetuate these schemes.
When one scam operation is shut down, it often resurfaces elsewhere. This issue has become a source of embarrassment for Beijing and is discouraging ordinary Chinese from traveling to Southeast Asia due to fears of falling victim to cyber scams or getting involved in such operations.
Recent media reports have exposed cases where young people were enticed to locations in Cambodia or Myanmar with promises of high-paying jobs, only to be coerced into working as scammers. Those who underperform often face physical punishment, including beatings and being forced to run laps.
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 repatriated 2,317 scam suspects from northern Myanmar to China.
China refers to these individuals as suspects, although experts argue that most of them were victims coerced into working for criminals. There are concerns about how they will be treated upon their return to China.
The schemes, based in countries such as Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, are managed by Chinese kingpins working in collaboration with local elites. Many of these operations are situated in regions where China has financed significant construction projects through President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Myanmar’s border areas have historically attracted criminals, including drug producers and traffickers, due to lax law enforcement. These regions are often under the control of ethnic minority armed groups, some of which either oppose or collaborate with Myanmar’s central government. There are also instances of collaboration with organized crime gangs.
From the Chinese government’s perspective, having numerous Chinese criminals operating across Southeast Asia is a source of extreme embarrassment, according to Jason Tower, an expert on transnational crime with the United States Institute of Peace.
These criminal syndicates are also known for “pig butchering” scams, where they persuade individuals, often located halfway across the world, to invest their money in fraudulent schemes after deceiving them through digital romances.
These scammers categorize their targets as Chinese and non-Chinese and employ scripts, images of models and influencers, and translation software to trick people they contact via phone or online into parting with their money, regardless of their location.
These criminals have “ridden on the shoulders of the Belt and Road Initiative,” as noted by Tower in a 2020 report for the United States Institute of Peace. This report highlights connections between the criminals and Chinese state enterprises, think tanks, and government officials.
Zhang found himself ensnared in one of these scams while working in Thailand. He was lured to a scam compound in Myanmar, where he realized his predicament and managed to escape.
In total, China has detained around 4,000 suspects and repatriated them.
Efforts to dismantle these networks do not appear comprehensive, with groups moving from one country to another to evade enforcement actions. Cambodia initially hosted many of these groups, but they relocated to Myanmar after Cambodia cracked down on online gambling and illegal casinos in 2019. Some of these groups were taken over by rival gangs.
China’s attempts to improve its image have not made significant progress, according to Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University. He emphasizes that comprehensive and sustained efforts are necessary to effectively combat these scams in the long term.
Carlo Juancho FuntanillaFrontend Developer, WordPress, Shopify
Contributing Editor
AMA ACLC San Pablo
