In the past year, Xubo Chun rarely had nightmares anymore, but when the incident of Chinese actor Wang Xing being deceived into Myanmar was exposed, he saw various scenes on his mobile phone and started tossing and turning at night, unable to sleep well.
This 39-year-old man had experienced almost the same thing as Wang Xing more than a year ago.
In July 2023, Xubo Chun, who lives in Shanghai, took on a job as a temporary actor in Yunnan for three months. On the 6th, he took a 36-hour hard seat train from Shanghai South Station to Kunming, then transferred to Xishuangbanna. Upon arrival that night, his mobile phone and passport were taken away, and he was threatened by people with long knives to climb over mountains and cross the border into Myanmar, eventually being forced to become a member of a fraud park.
There, he witnessed the fragility of life: four people were shot, those without performance were beaten with sticks, "pleading was useless." But he was not as lucky as Wang Xing, who was rescued in just four days—he spent over two months in such conditions until his family paid nearly a million yuan in ransom for his release.
After coming out, Xubo Chun always had nightmares and lost his hair. In those dreams, he was still standing, being beaten continuously with sticks on his buttocks.
In August 2023, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report on telecom fraud, pointing out that over 120,000 people were forced to engage in online fraud activities in Myanmar, and 100,000 were in Cambodia. That same year, the movie "All In" about telecom fraud in northern Myanmar was released in China, triggering a social discussion about the fraud parks, but the incident gradually faded from public view.
Until Wang Xing's disappearance, the public realized that the resurgence of fraud in Myanmar. Li Ling, a doctoral student at the University of Venice's Institute of Asian and North African Studies, who has long focused on the development of the Southeast Asian fraud industry and victim support, said that fraud crime has always been thriving, with parks maintaining communication between different locations, "compared to 2022, (the scale) has grown larger and more."
She also mentioned that unlike Cambodia, Myanmar's military coup in 2021 led to the complete disintegration of the military government institutions, making it difficult for foreign governments and NGOs to intervene in rescues, and the local victims suffered much more brutal violence than those in Cambodia.
High-paying jobs as bait
Xubo Chun has been taking temporary actor jobs for nearly ten years, which he sees as a way to make a living. He originally worked at an educational institution, but was laid off after the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. He then became a full-time freelancer, and taking temporary actor jobs became "like a routine."
At the end of June 2023, he saw a recruitment ad in a WeChat group for a job in Yunnan, claiming a monthly salary of ten thousand yuan. He calculated that if he could stay in the crew for two to three months, with food and accommodation provided, he could relieve the pressure of survival and save some money, "to prevent the current uncertain (environment)."
He left Shanghai in early July, and it took nearly two days to reach the gathering point in Xishuangbanna. When night fell, Xubo Chun found that there were four other people who came to "work" like him. After the person in charge counted the number of people, they were taken to the foot of a mountain. As soon as they got off the bus, "except for the moonlight, there were no street lights, no staff, nothing," Xubo Chun felt something was wrong.
Out of the woods around them, more than a dozen men in camouflage uniforms appeared, with knives on their waists. One of them spoke to reassure: "Don't panic, don't be afraid." He said on the other side of the mountain, there were many goods smuggled from Thailand, and they needed Xubo Chun and others to cooperate, "to carry them back and forth, just two or three days."
As soon as he finished speaking, these people pulled Xubo Chun's hand and walked forward. Xubo Chun described that it was not a normal mountain road, full of streams and stones, and soon, "the shoes were soaked, and the thighs were also rubbed with a lot of mud." But the "camouflage" did not allow them to quit.
During a rest, Xubo Chun asked the four why they came. One of them replied, "About a week ago, their fellow villagers invited them to eat and sing KTV at home, saying they made a lot of money, just because of this kind of carrying goods."
The economic downturn leading to living difficulties prompted people to go out to make a living.
In November 2023, the Supreme People's Procuratorate of China released a report on the governance of telecom fraud, showing that among the 253,000 people prosecuted by the Chinese prosecution for telecom network fraud, assisting information network crime activities, and concealing or disguising the proceeds of crime, 53% had no stable jobs.
It is worth noting that 31% of the criminals were under the age of 25. The report described that students in school and recent graduates are gradually becoming the targets of criminal groups.
Li Ling had conducted a follow-up investigation of Chinese telecom fraud survivors (those who escaped from Myanmar) from 2022 to 2024. Among the more than 100 people she contacted, over half were under the age of 25.
"Now (in China), the employment rate of college or technical secondary school students is very low, which also prompts them to think of going abroad to make a living." In June 2023, the unemployment rate among Chinese youth aged 16 to 24 climbed to 21.3%, reaching a new high since statistics were available in 2018.
In addition, Li Ling also found that the provinces from which the victims came had become more numerous and widespread. "Previously, we mostly encountered people from Jiangxi, Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, and recently we have also encountered people from the three northeastern provinces." She guessed that as people in neighboring areas became more alert, fraudsters began to reach out to more distant places.
Fraudsters 'killing the familiar' infiltrate various WeChat groups
After walking through several muddy roads, riding motorcycles, and large trucks, two days later, Xubo Chun and his group finally arrived at a farmhouse in the northern suburbs of Myanmar.
He described the first sight of the scene: the yard was enclosed, with no light visible. More than 30 men in green clothing, armed with long rifles and electric batons, surrounded seventy or eighty barefoot Chinese men squatting on the ground. Many of them were handcuffed, many looked like minors, "some were leaning against the wall being beaten," and those beating them were Chinese.
Xubo Chun said that the yard was a "human trafficking transfer point"—agents from the park came to pick people every day. Everyone who just arrived at the yard had a label, such as: "Xubo Chun July 11th." He heard a rumor that if not selected within 30 days, the person would be sent to Myawaddy or a medical ship for organ trading.
Before being picked, Xubo Chun said, these Chinese would use the trapped people's mobile phones to forcibly unlock them with face recognition, "the first step is to swipe all your money from Alipay and WeChat, the second step is to forcibly use your mobile phone to make loans." He saw people resist, and four people were shot dead in front of him. This behavior is currently unverifiable.
The third step is to join the trapped person's WeChat group. Chinese people in the fraud gang would use small accounts to infiltrate the WeChat groups on the trapped person's mobile phone, observe different messages, and gradually send various false messages to deceive people to come over.
Constantly learning rhetoric is a key to deceiving people. Li Ling also felt that fraud had reached a state of "unpreventable," and people could not just be alert, "if you delve into the Wang Xing incident, you will find that they (fraudsters) use very industry-specific rhetoric."
Like the notice Xubo Chun received to go to Yunnan, it initially stated it was an "S-level big production," "big actors, big directors, big production"—this made the victims feel that confidentiality was inevitable. So after arriving in Yunnan, when the other party asked for mobile phones and ID cards, he had no doubts. Moreover, after receiving the notice, he also had to go through a round of interviews, "he had requirements for height, then not too old, and also required to be able to say some lines."
Fraud infiltrates various industries and is not limited to the Chinese circles in mainland China. Last December, Taiwanese fire dancer Xie Yuepeng saw a recruitment for overseas performances in the Facebook community "Street Performer Information Exchange Platform." The post was written in traditional Chinese, and the recruitment process was the same as usual in Taiwan, with many industry friends leaving comments in the comment section.
After private messaging, the other party could show the transportation arrangements and detailed handover arrangements with the staff, "I really thought it was quite like Taiwanese," so Xie Yuepeng boarded the plane to Bangkok without any doubts. After landing, he took a seven or eight-hour car ride, and only after taking a wooden boat from Mae Sot across the river did he realize something was wrong.
"The language spoken by the other party was already different, and there were soldiers with guns, fully armed over there," he also noticed that the flags flying in the park were no longer the Thai national flag, "that's when I started to feel that, ah, disaster is upon us."
"This is very scary," Li Ling felt that the fraud group had found various outsourcing personnel to write different recruitment cases—sometimes, these outsourcing personnel might not even know they were writing for fraud. More importantly, in her contact with the victims, some people even found jobs from regular job-seeking websites like "58.com" and only later realized they had been deceived.
The increasingly arrogant parks
In addition to the endless tricks of fraud, every time the park moves, it becomes more and more rampant—similar to its development history.
In the early 1990s, the telecom fraud industry emerged in Taiwan, and later spread to Fuzhou, Fujian, China. But since the agreement signed between the two sides in 2009 to jointly combat it, the fraud base has shifted to Southeast Asia. At that time, the Philippines and Cambodia opened up gambling licenses, providing a breeding ground for online gambling fraud.
According to field research by Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in contemporary China studies at the University of Melbourne, and Li Ling, from the mid-2010s, fraud companies that originally operated only in residential units or hotels gathered together, sharing facilities, forming the current "park" model.
In 2019, Cambodia issued a "gambling ban," and the fraud group had to move again. That year, Myanmar introduced the "Gambling Law," allowing foreigners to open casinos, indirectly facilitating the fraud industry. Thus, the gang gradually concentrated in three areas in Myanmar: Laogai in northern Myanmar controlled by the four major families, Dachi in the Golden Triangle area, and the KK park in Myawaddy in eastern Myanmar.
In recent years, the Chinese police have continuously cracked down on the fraud in northern Myanmar, and by 2023, they successfully arrested the heads of the "four major families." In November of this year, the Ministry of Public Security of China announced that the large-scale parks in the northern Myanmar area had been completely eradicated, but at the same time stated that the personnel involved in fraud had moved south to areas such as Myawaddy.
Jennifer Wang, a case consultant for the Global Anti-Scam Organization (GASO), described the industry's movement as "musical chairs," "if it doesn't work here today, I'll go to Cambodia, if Cambodia doesn't work, I'll go to the Philippines, back and forth, it's the same group engaging in fraud, the structure is exactly the same."
She pointed out that the operation of the parks is entirely managed by property management companies, and when it's time to move, the fraud group "just moves people."
The recent instability in Myanmar has also made the group more unscrupulous.
In 2021, after the military coup in Myanmar, armed resistance emerged like bamboo shoots after rain, and the military government's power could not suppress them—by September 2022, the military government controlled less than a quarter of the country's 330 townships.
Many parks have armed protection. Taking Myawaddy, where Wang Xing was located, as an example, it is located in Kayin State in southeastern Myanmar and is occupied by the Karen Border Guard Force (BGF), making it difficult for officials to approach, "whatever I do, no one cares, I'm definitely going to get more and more rampant," Jennifer said.
On the 23rd day in the yard, Xubo Chun was finally selected. He was taken to the "Red Lotus Hotel" in Laogai. According to the photos he provided, the exterior of the hotel looked no different from the old hotels in other small counties in mainland China, but from the outside, each window was fitted with a very dense layer of anti-theft iron windows.
Xubo Chun remembered that the hotel had seven floors, each floor had two fraud teams, each with 100 people, "basically all Chinese"; there were also 20 or 30 armed Burmese guarding. Working hours were from 10:30 in the morning to 2:00 at midnight, each person was given a computer and four Apple phones, maintaining 20 accounts on Instagram to chat with people and lure them to invest in Tether (USDT).
There were two meals a day, mainly noodles. One day during a meal, he heard the team leader tell the boss, "Don't always make them drink your Fujian seaweed soup." This made him sure the boss was from Fujian.
But he soon lost his appetite. After the first week of adaptation, those who couldn't produce results were punished every day after work—each team had a different way of torturing people, "my team likes to beat from the buttocks down with sticks, like the team next door likes to burn with cigarette butts."
Xie Yuepeng was also punished in Myawaddy. When he first arrived at the park, the person in charge asked him to contact his family to pay a ransom of 30,000 US dollars, then he was locked in a small dark room and beaten with fists or sticks for five days. After being released, Xie Yuepeng secretly used a computer to seek help from his family to no avail, and when discovered, he was taken to a military base for further punishment.
Every day, he was stripped to the waist, handcuffed to a horizontal bar, and exposed to the sun for 3 hours, "bleeding, peeling, and they wouldn't give you any medicine." Faced with humiliating torture, he thought about suicide. But when he thought that his organs might be sold after death, "it feels like they got a bargain," Xie Yuepeng began to actively think of ways to escape.
How to 'fish people' from the park
In the park where Xubo Chun was located, there was at least one opportunity to "report safety" every month.
In August, Xubo Chun was finally able to use the phone, and under constant surveillance, he chatted with a friend he grew up with. He kept talking about his already deceased father, hoping his friend could see the clues, and then he sent his address to his friend and deleted the record.
On September 29, the Mid-Autumn Festival, Xubo Chun contacted his friend again, but his friend said: "It's very difficult to save you... It's very difficult for the domestic police to gather evidence, and cross-border communication is difficult."
After discovering that a family member was missing, the police are always the first help people think of, but they often hit a wall here—"not filing a case." After the Wang Xing incident, someone compiled a "Star Homecoming Plan" document online for people to fill in the victim's information. As of the time of publication, the document had recorded more than 1700 cases, nearly half of which indicated that the police "did not file a case."
"For adults, the rate of filing a case is actually quite low, it's not that you report a case and they will file it for you," Li Ling said, evidence is very important to the police, "only if you know who sold you, and then your pictures say (show) you have been detained, or subjected to violence, can you be established as a victim of 'illegal detention.'"
In 2023, Ms. Guo from Yunnan learned that her 17-year-old brother was in Wa State, Myanmar, after receiving a call from the police station. She first went to the local police station to report the case, then called the Chinese Embassy in Myanmar and the Consulate in Mandalay, but in the end, there was no follow-up.
Over the past four years, Jennifer has been involved in rescue work, and she said that due to administrative and diplomatic issues, this process generally progresses very slowly.
The official rescue channel is roughly like this: after filing a case, the public security of the county must report the case to the provincial department, the provincial department reports to Beijing, Beijing reports to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs then transfers to the embassy, and then a public letter is issued, urging the local police to handle the case. "If it goes this far, it takes at least a few months," Jennifer said.
Anxious family members had to turn to civilian rescue teams to "fish people" from the
