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Crime in China
ChinaPolitics

China needs to ‘work with the rest of the world’ to stop cybercrime, trafficking

  • Chinese police should look to their international counterparts to tackle online scams and trafficking of humans and drugs, experts say
  • Such crimes often involve people operating elsewhere – particularly in less developed countries – and funds being sent across borders

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Online crime involving cross-border operations is on the rise in China. Photo: Shutterstock
Jess Ma

At midnight on Tuesday, armed police burst into a soundproofed office in the southern Chinese city of Nanning, arresting about 100 people allegedly carrying out employment and shopping scams on social media.

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It was just the latest raid targeting scam syndicates in China, where online crime involving cross-border operations is on the rise, according to Ministry of Public Security data.

Experts say those international networks are a problem for Chinese investigators, and they need to do more to collaborate with overseas counterparts to tackle crimes like scams, as well as trafficking of humans and illegal drugs.

“The Ministry of Public Security can do a lot to suppress narcotics, human trafficking and cybercrime, but unless they work with the rest of the world, they are going to get displacement effects,” said Roderic Broadhurst, emeritus professor in criminology at the Australian National University.

Scams have become a major headache for Chinese law enforcement – in 2020, about 40 per cent of criminal cases involved scams, according to the public security ministry. In the past five years, some 1.2 million telecoms fraud cases were busted, with 1.3 million suspects arrested. New legislation targeting phone and online fraud has been drafted to tackle the problem and was reviewed by lawmakers in October.
New legislation has been drafted to tackle phone and online fraud. Photo: Xinhua
New legislation has been drafted to tackle phone and online fraud. Photo: Xinhua

Online scams and other crimes such as human trafficking and the illegal drugs trade often involve people operating outside China – particularly in less developed countries where there might be a lower risk of detection – and funds being sent across borders.

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