China crackdown on cyber scams in South-East Asia nets thousands but leaves networks intact

Myanmar police handing over five telecom and Internet fraud suspects to Chinese police at Yangon International Airport in Yangon, Myanmar, on Aug 26, 2023. Tens of thousands of people, many of them Chinese, have been caught up in cyber scams based in South-East Asia. Local and Chinese authorities have netted thousands of people in a crackdown on such schemes, but experts say they are failing to root out the local elites and criminal networks that are running the scams. — Chinese embassy in Myanmar/Xinhua via AP

BANGKOK: Zhang Hongliang, a former restaurant manager in central China, took various gigs in and outside China 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 compound in Myanmar, where he was instead ordered to lure Chinese into giving up their savings for fake investment schemes via social media platforms.