Chinese organised crime in Southeast Asia thrives on fraud, drug, and human trafficking and technological exploitation, with Myanmar serving as a key hub. Despite crackdowns, these operations persist, necessitating urgent regional and international intervention.

On 3 January 2025, Wang Xin, a small-time Chinese actor, went missing in Thailand’s border city Mae Sot, a hub for traffickers who smuggle people into Myanmar. He had travelled to Bangkok in response to an acting job offered to him on WeChat. According to Thai police, the person who offered the job claimed to represent a major Thai entertainment company. Upon arrival, Wang was picked up and transported to Myanmar, where his head was shaved and he was forced to make phone calls to defraud people. The case went viral over the internet; Wang was rescued within a week because of the intervention from relevant governments.

Wang was among the lucky ones to escape, unlike the hundreds of thousands of victims from China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore who remain trapped in sprawling scam compounds with little hope of rescue.

Chinese organised fraud in Southeast Asia: key trends

Organised fraud continues to thrive in Southeast Asia. Several trends stand out. First is the lucrativeness of this criminal enterprise. Organised fraud is “less risky but more profitable” than drug trafficking. According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Report, estimates range from US$18 billion to $37 billion in financial loss to victims in East and Southeast Asia in 2023. The generated income enables Chinese organised crime groups to lure victims and potential perpetrators to join them.

Second, technological development has allowed criminals to expand their networks. Apart from utilising apps and online forums, artificial intelligence (AI)- driven cybercrime is growing increasingly across the region, especially through deepfakes. The UNODC tracked a 600 percent spike in references to deepfakes on cybercriminal forums and Telegram communities during the first half of 2024.

Cryptocurrency is another emerging trend for exploitation. Due to its financial appeal, it has been used to attract victims of investment scams. Most users are unfamiliar with cryptocurrency investments and have limited knowledge about the risks involved, resulting in loss through fraudulent schemes. For organised crime groups, cryptocurrency provides a convenient way to transfer funds, hide their source, and make it easy to launder money across borders. In Southeast Asia, regulatory frameworks for digital assets are still developing, leaving the public vulnerable to high levels of risk.

Lastly, the nexus of cybercrime and human trafficking is a noteworthy point. Over the past few years, a prevalent form of organised fraud combines telecom scams with physical violence in human trafficking. “Pig butchering,” also known as romance baiting, is a form of investment scam combining social engineering and romance fraud to manipulate victims into financial losses. Scammers build trust through various schemes, such as  fake investment platforms, resulting in the use of violence for labour exploitation.

Central to the allegations linking these scam operations is Wan Kuok-koi, aka “Broken Tooth,” an ex-Macau branch leader of the 14K triad, a Hong Kong-based Chinese organised crime group that operates internationally. Wan remains at large even with his known criminal affiliation, highlighting global enforcement challenges.

Myanmar as the new global crime capital

Myanmar has been a hotspot for drugs, cybercrime, and human trafficking schemes for Chinese organised crime groups. The New York Times describes it as the “Global Crime Capital,” a magnet for criminal syndicates, particularly from China. Myanmar’s February 2021 military coup swept the nation into civil war and turned it into “the world’s largest hub of organised crime,” with an Organised Crime Index of 8.15 in 2023, the worst out of 193 countries. Myanmar used to be a major opium exporter.

Historically, scam compounds in Myanmar have remained concentrated in the Kokang region in the north, near the China border, and are controlled by the so-called “Four Major Families” (si da jiazu). These groups include the Bai Suocheng family, the Wei Chaoren family, the Liu Guoxi family, and the Liu Zhengxiang family. They have formed alliances with local actors, creating a profitable criminal ecosystem.

Joint law enforcement operations between China and countries in Southeast Asia have pushed these cyber scam groups to deeper regions, such as Wan Hai, Tangyan, and Myawaddy, a city on the Thai border and across a river from Mae Sot. Wan Hai is home to more than 1,000 scam compounds that employ over 100,000.

Since July 2023, when China began cracking down on telecoms and organised fraud linked to Myanmar’s northern region, over 53,000 Chinese fraud suspects have been arrested. The Chinese government claim that the “Four Major Families” in Kokang were dismantled, and that large-scale cyber fraud operations near the border has been eliminated.

The socioeconomic vulnerabilities of Chinese victims—and perpetrators

Many of the cyber scams and frauds in Myanmar and the Southeast Asian region involve Chinese citizens. A lingering economic downturn—compounded by the US-China trade conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic, real estate slump, and restrained consumer spending—has led to an uptick in fraudulent job advertisements, deceptive marketing, and investment scams. According to The Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China, scams have increasingly targeted students and recent graduates. With heightened Chinese enforcement of fraud, China’s telecom scam rings have expanded their activity more towards Southeast Asia, and especially Myanmar. These groups absorb local people and Chinese citizens who cross the border into criminal activity. The characteristics of individuals trafficked remain consistent, often referred to as the “three lows” (san di): low age, low income, and low education. In China’s first ten months of 2024, 31 percent of suspects prosecuted for telecom scams and associated crimes were under 25; 85 percent had only a high school education or below (including vocational training), and 53 percent were unemployed.

These demographic figures expose the socioeconomic gaps that criminal syndicates exploit, which require selective interventions to disrupt recruitment and safeguard vulnerable populations from falling into these schemes.

Business as usual?

Given the overall economic downturn in China, young job seekers will likely continue falling into the trap of organised fraud schemes. Despite the Chinese government’s crackdown on major organised crime rings, regulatory and enforcement loopholes exist in the Southeast Asian region. Especially in Myanmar, the intersection of organised fraud, human trafficking, and technology-driven crime has transformed the country into a critical crime nexus, with scam compounds taking advantage of gaps.

This growing crisis demands an urgent and coordinated global response to suppress these criminal networks and take proactive measures to protect at-risk populations. A lack of decisive and coordinated intervention will not only allow such organised fraud networks to expand but also cement Myanmar’s role as a major hub for organised crime, with a profound impact on regional and global security.

Dr Leo S.F. Lin is a senior lecturer at the School of Policing Studies, Charles Sturt University.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.