Hooked by the promise of money

It was May 25 this year, an otherwise normal day, that Lin Ping received a shocking WeChat message from her 19-year-old son Xiaowei, saying he and a friend had been “tricked and sold to Myanmar,” pleading for her to seek help from the Chinese police.

In the frantic messages that followed, Xiaowei said he had been lured by the promise of a job transporting raw jade stones in Xishuangbanna, in southwest China’s Yunnan province.