Foreign News
Thousands of Chinese lured abroad and forced to be scammers – now Beijing is cracking down
“Should I feel anything?” asks the beady-eyed man, sitting in a padded cell with handcuffs around his wrists.
He’s being grilled by Chinese investigators about the time he allegedly ordered a stranger to be killed – a human offering to celebrate his sworn brotherhood with a business partner.
“Wasn’t he a living, breathing person?” an investigator asks.
“I didn’t feel much,” the man maintains.
The scene may sound like it came straight out of a crime drama. In fact, it is part of a documentary on Chinese state media – a look inside the workings of the justice system almost unheard of in a country where court proceedings are largely kept out the public eye.
The handcuffed man answering questions is Chen Dawei, a member of the infamous Wei family, one of several powerful mafia groups that for years operated with impunity in Myanmar’s border town of Laukkaing.
His confession forms just one part of a months-long propaganda push by Chinese officials. It both warns Chinese people of South East Asia’s billion-dollar scam industry, and highlights the Chinese government’s crackdown on the men behind an industry which has trapped thousands, and stolen billions.
The message China wants to send, as one investigator puts it, is clear: “It’s to warn other people, no matter who you are, where you are, as long as you commit such heinous crimes against Chinese people, you will pay the price.”
Or, to use a Chinese idiom: kill the chicken to scare the monkey.
There are few chickens bigger than the Weis, Lius, Mings and Bais – Godfather-esque families who rose to power in Laukkaing in the early 2000s.
Under their rule, the impoverished backwater was transformed into a flashy hub of casinos and red-light districts.
More recent are the scam farms – which hold people against their will, forcing them to defraud strangers online, or face brutal punishment or even death. Many of those trapped were Chinese and targeted people in China.
But the families’ empires came crashing down in 2023, when Myanmar authorities arrested them and handed them to China. Since then, Chinese courts have tried them for crimes ranging from fraud to human trafficking to homicide.
Examples are now being made out of the families: 11 members of the Ming clan and five of the Bais have been sentenced to death, while dozens have been given lengthy jail terms. Prosecution is under way for the Lius and the Weis.
Their ignominious falls from grace are clear in the documentaries they feature in, from the glint of their handcuffs to the colour of their prison uniforms.
It is a far cry from the lives they were living just two years ago.
The rise of Myanmar’s scam clans
The godfathers of Laukkaing rose to power after Min Aung Hlaing, who now heads Myanmar’s military government, led an operation to oust the town’s then-dominant warlord.
The military leader had been looking for co-operative allies, and Bai Suocheng – then a deputy of the warlord – fitted the bill.
Bai was appointed the chairman of Laukkaing district and his family came to command a 2,000-strong militia, Chinese media reported.
In the power vacuum left by these changes, a handful of families swooped in, securing military and political power.
According to Chinese investigators, the Wei family had one member of parliament and another military camp commander. Meanwhile, the Lius controlled key infrastructure like water and electricity and exerted strong influence over local security forces.
For years they made their money through gambling and prostitution.
But more recently they expanded to cyberscam operations, with each family controlling dozens of scam compounds and casinos that raked in billions of dollars.
While the families lived large with grand banquets and luxury cars, a culture of abominable violence thrived behind the walls of their scam compounds, Chinese authorities said.
Testimonies collected from freed workers point to a common pattern of abuse: fingers chopped off with knives, zaps of electric batons and regular beatings. Unco-operative workers were locked in small dark rooms and starved or beaten until they gave in.
China’s war on the ‘scamdemic’
Many of the Chinese workers had been lured there with lucrative job offers – no doubt tempting amid China’s economic slowdown and high youth unemployment.
Horror stories of such scam centres have seeped into daily chatter in China, from taxi rides to social media and pop culture.
No More Bets, a 2023 blockbuster about Chinese people trafficked to a foreign scam farm, kept millions of Chinese tourists away from Thailand – which has gained a reputation for being a transit hub to scam centres in Myanmar and Cambodia.
In January this year, the national spotlight was on Wang Xing, a small-time Chinese actor who had flown to Thailand for an acting gig, only to be taken to a scam centre across the border in Myanmar.
His family’s search for him went viral and he was ultimately rescued.
But Wang is in the lucky minority. Many Chinese people are still looking for their loved ones who have disappeared into South East Asia’s scam centres.
“My cousin was lured there four or five years ago. We haven’t heard from him at all. My aunt is in tears every day, it’s hard to describe her current condition,” a Weibo user wrote last month.
Selina Ho, associate professor specialising in Chinese politics at the National University of Singapore, tells the BBC that “by publicising the most recent crackdown, Chinese authorities are aiming to calm domestic sentiments and reassure the families of victims”.
The UN estimates that hundreds of thousands of people are still trapped in scam centres worldwide.
Much to Beijing’s chagrin, those running many such scam centres are often Chinese themselves.
This is common knowledge among Chinese citizens. “Once you’re abroad, the people you should least trust are your own countrymen,” reads a comment on Weibo.
“The fact that Chinese nationals are the masterminds behind many of these operations has been deeply damaging to China’s image on the international stage,” Ivan Franceschini, co-author of Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds, tells the BBC.
As anxieties rise at home, Chinese authorities are eager to show their resolve in eradicating these massive scam networks.
Since 2023, Chinese and Myanmar authorities have arrested more than 57,000 Chinese nationals for their role in cyberscams, state media reported.
And they’ve made it clear that it’s not just the Godfathers they’re after. In October, China announced the prosecution of another syndicate which they described as a “new generation of power” in Laukkaing that’s “no less violent” than the infamous families.
In – yet another – state media documentary, a Chinese official investigating this syndicate recalled what his team leader had told him: “If this case can’t be solved, there will be a permanent stain on your career.”
For all the effort that China is putting into its crackdown and the ensuing publicity, the numbers offer some optimism: cyberscams reported in China have declined steadily over the past year, and authorities say such crimes have been “effectively curbed”.
As one official told documentary viewers, investigating scam gangs in Myanmar has made him realise “how happy we are in China, and how important a sense of security is to Chinese people”.
[BBC]
The ants are flying in Kenya at the moment
During this rainy season, swarms can be seen leaving the thousands of anthills in and around Gilgil, a quiet agricultural town in Kenya’s Rift Valley that has emerged as the centre of a booming illegal trade.
The mating ritual sees winged males leave the nest to impregnate queens, who also take flight at this time. This makes it the perfect time to chase down queen ants to sell on to smugglers who are at the heart of a growing global black market, that taps into the pet craze for keeping ants in transparent enclosures designed to observe the insects as they busily build a colony.
It is the giant African harvester ant queens, which are large and coloured red, that are most prized by international ant collectors – one can fetch up to £170 ($220) on the black market, which tends to operate online.
A single fertilised queen is able to create a whole colony and can live for decades – and can be easily posted as scanners do not tend to detect organic material.
“At first, I did not even know it was illegal,” a man, who asked not to be named, told the BBC about how he had once acted as a broker, linking foreign buyers with local collection networks.
Also known as Messor cephalotes, these ants are native to East Africa and known for their distinctive seed-gathering behaviour making them popular with ant collectors.
“A friend told me a foreigner was paying good money for queen ants – the big red ones which are easily seen around here,” the former broker said.
“You look for the mounds near open fields, usually early morning before the heat. The foreigners never came to the fields themselves – they would wait in town, in a guest house or a car, and we would bring the ants to them packed in small tubes or syringes they supplied us with.”
The scale of the illicit trade in Kenya became apparent last year when 5,000 giant harvester ant queens – mainly collected around Gilgil – were found alive at a guest house in Naivasha, a nearby lakeside town popular with tourists.
The suspects – from Belgium, Vietnam and Kenya – had packed the test tubes and syringes with moist cotton wool, which would enable each ant to survive for two months, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).
The plan was to take them to Europe and Asia and put them up for sale.
This trade in ants has caught scientists and the authorities by surprise.
The East African nation is more accustomed to high-profile wildlife crimes involving elephant tusks and rhino horns.
UK based retailer Ants RbUs described the giant African harvester ant as “many peoples dream species” – though the queens are currently out of stock, with the site explaining that it is very hard for retailers to source them.
“Even I, as an entomologist, have been surprised at the extent of the apparent trade,” Dino Martins, a biologist based in Kenya, where there are around 600 kinds of ants, told the BBC.
However, he can understand the fascination with East Africa’s harvester, with colonies created by a “foundress queen”, who can grow up to 25mm (0.98 inches) and who produces eggs throughout her life.
“They are one of the most enigmatic species of ants – they form large colonies, engage in interesting behaviours and are easy to keep. They are not aggressive.”
During the swarming he says the queens mate with several males.
“Then that is it for the males – their job is done… most are eaten by predators or die,” the entomologist says, going on to explain how the queen then scurries away to dig a small burrow and begin laying eggs to start her empire.
Her workers and soldier ants, those that protect the nest, are all female and will eventually number in the hundreds of thousands.
“Nests can live for over 50 years, perhaps even up to 70 years. I personally know of nests near Nairobi that are at least 40 years old as I’ve been visiting them for that long,” said Martins.
This means the queens live that long too – because as soon as she dies, the colony collapses and any surviving workers will look for another nest.
Kenyans who have had to deal with ants raiding their crops or invading their houses know this well – and to get rid of a colony someone is sent in to locate the queen, often hidden deep in one of the tunnels or chambers of an ant mound.
The former broker said ants could also be harvested by gently disturbing the mound and collecting them as they tried to escape.
“It was only when I saw the arrests on the news that I realised what I had been part of – and I immediately quit,” he said.
Those arrested were convicted on charges of biopiracy and ordered to pay fines or serve 12 months in jail – they opted to pay the $7,700 fee and the foreign nationals left the country.
Two weeks ago, a Chinese national – the alleged mastermind behind last year’s ring and who is said to have escaped using a different passport, was arrested at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyata International Airport with another 2,000 queen ants packed in test tubes and tissue rolls.
For Zhengyang Wang, who was part of a team of researchers who published a report on the ant trade in 2023 focusing on China, this is a worry and could “wreak havoc” with local ecosystems.
“Initially, we were very excited when we learnt that many people have taken up keeping ants,” Wang, assistant professor at Sichuan University, told the BBC.
“A colony of pet ants are often kept in a formicarium, which is basically a transparent plastic box so that keepers can observe colonies at work, digging tunnels, collecting food, and guarding their queen. I’d say it’s quite charming and… can be a good way of educating people about insects and their behaviour.
“But then we realised, wait, isn’t keeping invasive species incredibly dangerous?”
Monitoring online sales – of more than 58,000 colonies – in China over six months, the researchers found that more than a quarter of the traded species were not native to China – despite it being illegal to import them.
“If the trade volume of invasive ants continues to grow, it’s only a matter of time before a few escape from their formicaria and become established in the wild,” said Wang.
The study he worked on, published in the journal Biological Conservation, explained what could happen in the case of giant African harvester, one of the most traded species in China: “For example, Messor cephalotes, an East African native, is among the largest seed harvesters in the world and could potentially disrupt predominantly grain-based agriculture in south-eastern China.”
The environmental consequences are also a concern in Kenya.
“Harvester ants are both keystone species and ecosystem engineers. They harvest seeds of grasses, and other plants and in so doing also help to disperse the seeds,” said Martins, adding that the insects “create a more healthy and dynamic grassland”.
Mukonyi Watai, a senior scientist at Kenya’s Wildlife Research and Training Institute, shares these fears.
“Unsustainable harvesting – particularly the removal of queen ants – can lead to colony collapse, disrupting ecosystems and threatening biodiversity,” he told the BBC.
It is possible to collect ants legally in Kenya – in line with various international treaties – with a special permit, which would require the buyer to sign a benefit-sharing agreement with the local community involved to split any profits.
But, according to the KWS, so far none have been applied for – with the paperwork also requiring details of how many ants are being collected and their destination.
formicarium allows collectors to see the workings of an ant colony (BBC)Some conservationists are now calling for greater trade protections for all ant species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), the global wildlife trade treaty.
“The reality is that no ant species is currently listed under Cites,” Sérgio Henriques, a researcher into the global ant trade, told the BBC.
“Without international treaties monitoring these movements, the scale of the trade remains largely invisible to policy makers and the global community,” he said.
But for the KWS the real problem is more immediate – how to monitor and clamp down on “under-reported” insect trafficking, with the agency suggesting better surveillance equipment at airports and others border points would be a good start.
Martins agrees: “It is likely only a fraction of the actual ants being traded that are being detected, so one can only guess at the scale for now.”
Journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo argues that Kenya is overlooking a significant global revenue opportunity.
“The ants are not finite items like gold or diamonds. They are biological assets that can be bred and farmed, and their production can be scaled up to thousand a day. Yet we treat them like stolen artefacts,” he recently wrote in Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.
In fact, Kenya’s cabinet did approve policy guidelines last year aimed at commercialising the wildlife economy, including the ant trade.
“The guidelines seek to promote sustainable use trade of wild species such as ants to generate jobs, wealth and community livelihoods across all the counties,” said Watai.
With careful monitoring in place, it could be that future farmers around Gilgil will have special formicaria on their land expanding the yields from their fields and orchards – full of vegetables and fruits – to include lucrative queen ants.
But the debate over the dangers of exporting ants to hobby collectors in different parts of the world is yet to be settled.
At least two people have been killed when an Air Canada Express flight from Montreal struck a ground vehicle while landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, according to several United States media outlets. The airport has been closed and flights diverted.
Kathryn Garcia, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said 32 of the 41 people who were injured had been released on Monday while nine remained in hospital with “serious injuries”. Those injured included passengers, crew members and the two officers on the fire truck. Both officers remained hospitalised with non-life-threatening injuries.
The aircraft, operated by Jazz Aviation, a regional partner of Air Canada, struck a firefighting truck on Runway 4 about 11:40pm on Sunday (03:40 GMT on Monday) as the vehicle drove to a separate incident, the Port Authority said.
A preliminary passenger list showed 76 people on board Flight AC8646, including four crew members, Jazz Aviation said in a statement.
The CRJ-900 aircraft struck the vehicle at a speed of 39 kilometres per hour (24 miles per hour), the flight tracking website Flightradar24 said.
“The airport is currently closed to facilitate the response and allow for a thorough investigation,” the Port Authority said in a statement to the AFP news agency.
Emergency response protocols were “immediately activated”, it said.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a ground stop for all departures to LaGuardia due to the aircraft emergency with the airport closure in effect until 05:30 GMT. The probability of an extension was listed as high.
[Aljazeera]
Along Beirut’s downtown waterfront, Alaa is looking for somewhere to rest his head.
The Syrian refugee, originally from the occupied Golan Heights, is now homeless. He explained that he had already spent the day wandering around the Lebanese capital trying to find shelter.
He used to live in Dahiyeh – the southern suburbs of Beirut that have been pummelled by Israeli attacks, which have now killed MORE THAN 1,000 across Lebanon.
Now, he’s just looking for somewhere he can be safe. And in that context, Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival that began on Friday, is far from his mind.
When asked if he had any plans for Eid, he replied in the negative. Instead, his focus was on getting a tent.
“I got rejected from staying in a school, then I went to sleep on the corniche,” Alaa said. “Then people from the municipality told me to come here to downtown Beirut’s waterfront.”
Alaa wasn’t able to find a tent and is sleeping in the open air for now. But others in the area have, transforming a downtown more famous for its expensive restaurants and bars into a tent city for those displaced by the fighting. Across Lebanon, more than a million people have been displaced.
Lebanese are uncertain when this war will end, particularly as they have barely recovered from the conflict with Israel that ran between October 2023 and November 2024.
It makes celebrations difficult – a common theme across the countries affected by the current conflict.
In Iran, now in its third week of US-Israeli attacks – with no sign of an immediate end and an economic crisis that preceded the conflict, people are struggling to afford any of the items typically bought during the holiday season.
And it is potentially dangerous for people to shop at places like Tehran’s grand bazaar, which has been damaged by the bombing.
The religious element of Eid adds an extra sensitivity for antigovernment Iranians, some of whom now see any sign of religiosity as support for the Islamic Republic. The fact that Nowruz – the Persian New Year – falls on Friday this year means that some in the antigovernment camp will be focused on that celebration instead, and eschewing any events to mark Eid.
[Aljazeera]
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