Netizens Call for Attention to Prisoners in Southeast Asia Scam Operations

The high-profile kidnapping and rescue of 31-year-old actor Wang Xing from a telecom-scam compound on the border of Myanmar and Thailand has incited heated discussion on the Chinese internet. Wang was found last week, just two days after his girlfriend chose to go public and plead for help online. The Global Times lionized the Chinese government’s role in the rescue, writing that Wang “has returned to the embrace of his motherland, which makes him feel warm, secure, and free. While in a foreign country, it was the strength of his motherland that gave him courage and hope.” But many netizens expressed frustration that the government has yet to extend the same resources to the thousands of Chinese victims who still remain trapped abroad in slave-like conditions. (Some concerned relatives have considered resorting to vigilante-style civilian rescue teams.) Helen Davidson and Rebecca Ratcliffe at The Guardian described how Wang’s ordeal played out:

[Wang’s girlfriend] Jia Jia first raised the alert in a social media post saying Wang had gone missing. The post said that after Wang was told they weren’t staying in Bangkok, he shared his location with her and they kept texting on WeChat until they lost contact near the border. Jia Jia contacted the Shanghai police and Chinese consular offices in Thailand, before travelling to Thailand herself. Her posts were shared by Chinese celebrities, and a related hashtag saw more than half a billion engagements on Weibo.

[…] In a video filmed on his flight home, published by Chinese media, Wang said he’d been to Thailand in 2018 for work and therefore thought this latest invitation was a normal shoot. He described being sent across the border into Myanmar, and pushed into a car by armed men. He was taken to a building where at least 50 others were also being held, he said, and they were all forced to have their heads shaved and undergo training for working scams.

[…] No arrests have been announced in relation to Wang’s disappearance. Thai and Chinese officials are reportedly working together to coordinate searches for other missing citizens.

[…] On Thursday last week, reports emerged of two other Chinese nationals – male model Yang Zeqi, and 21-year-old woman Wu Jiaqi – who had gone missing in similar circumstances. Yang flew to Bangkok on 20 December for a purported film audition, but was also driven to the border. In his last known contact, Yang told his mother in a video call he was safe, but had visible injuries to his eyes, according to Chinese media. The whereabouts and welfare of Wu are unknown. Thai police are investigating both cases. [Source]

On Weibo, netizens rushed to the profile of actor/director/producer Wu Jing to plead that he rescue the remaining Chinese victims held in Myanmar’s scam centers. Wu directed and starred as the protagonist of the Wolf Warrior film series, which portrayed daring evacuations of Chinese citizens from dangerous conflict zones abroad and promoted the idea that a strong Chinese state will always save its citizens in need. Some netizens joked that he should quickly produce “Wolf Warrior 3: Escape from Myawaddy” (an infamous scam compound on the Burmese-Thai border). Since Wu did not reply, netizens also bombarded his wife’s Weibo account.

Weibo user @稀薄20 created an initiative titled "Stars Come Home Plan" to document information related to victims trapped in Myanmar. By Saturday, it had collected information on more than 1,500 victims who had disappeared between 2019 and January of this year. Those who contributed to the initiative described how their friends and relatives were lured abroad with high-paying job offers and other false promises, then kidnapped and violently prevented from escaping. CDT Chinese editors compiled some reactions to the initiative from Weibo users:

韭五55: Please approve [my entry]. I need to fill in my brother’s information. His name is Xiaowu. He landed in Thailand on October 29, and I lost contact with him on October 31.

奇怪的它它它: Wu Jing must be under a lot of pressure.

星若HE: This is no longer just a scam, it’s terrorism!!!

青春红豆泡脚: Hello, I need to register. My younger brother was scammed in Myawaddy. My old man has terminal cancer and his days are numbered. I am pretty worried. Thank you. [Chinese]

Some netizens turned their anger toward Chinese authorities for not doing enough to bring fraudsters to justice. One WeChat post outlining various reasons for the continuation of large-scale scam operations in places like Myanmar cited the existence of loopholes in telecommunications and financial management, which allow foreign scam operations to use money laundered in RMB and tens of thousands of Chinese SIM cards while bypassing real-name registration rules. In another WeChat post, popular science commentator Xiang Dongliang questioned the efficacy of those rules, and argued that fraudsters would not be able to maintain their criminal operations without the collusion of certain “traitors” within the Chinese telecom, banking, and online media sectors:

Are these traitors impossible to catch, or do we not want to catch them?

[…] In order to cooperate with the fight against telecom fraud, the public has sacrificed much of its right to privacy and endured many inconveniences. But have our esteemed telecom operators, banking systems, and the internet platforms that control so much of our personal information truly put forth an equal and reciprocal effort?

Judging from the results, I personally find it very hard to believe that they made much of an effort. [Chinese]

The latest issue of Global China Pulse highlights various aspects of the scam industry in Southeast Asia. One piece focuses on the failure of properly identifying and supporting victims trapped in scam compounds, and another amplifies the voices of over a dozen victims. At the press conference following his rescue last week, actor Wang Xing complied with the orders of a Thai official by stating, “Thailand is safe, and I will come back again.” But as the South China Morning Post reported, the search term “How do I cancel my Thailand trip?” soon yielded over 380,000 posts on Xiaohongshu.

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