China is cracking down on fraud. Not just those who hit Americans

governments around The world is struggling to address this problem The emergence of fraud on an industrial scale Operations based in countries such as Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia that have cost victims billions of dollars over the past few years. These operations are often linked to Chinese organized crime, Use of forced labour To carry out the actual fraud, and to rely on it Extensive money laundering networks To collect profit. They have become Very widely It has taken root in the region even with the application of major international law cooperation Targeting Neither individual fraud centers nor gang leaders have been able to stem the tide.

FBI He said This week, “cyber-enabled” fraud complaints from Americans totaled more than $17.7 billion in reported losses last year — and that number is likely far lower than the true total, since many victims don’t report their experiences. Some US officials say the main obstacle to comprehensively addressing this issue is the lack of cooperation with Chinese authorities. They say China’s efforts to tackle industrial fraud are aimed at reducing the number of Chinese citizens affected rather than stopping the activity comprehensively to protect all victims around the world.

“To its credit, China has cracked down on these operations, but it has done so selectively and largely turned a blind eye to fraud centers targeting foreigners,” Reva Price, a member of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said at a press conference. Senate hearing last month. “As a result, Chinese criminal gangs have been incentivized to shift toward targeting Americans.”

According to the committee’s research published In March, Beijing’s selective strategy helped encourage some Chinese scammers, even those operating inside China, to continue operating as long as they exclusively targeted foreigners.

Other US-based researchers have reached similar conclusions. From 2023 to 2024, China reported a 30% decline in the amount of money its citizens lost to scams, while the United States suffered a more than 40% increase, according to Congress. certificate last year by Jason Tower, who was then the Myanmar country director for the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Program on Transnational Crime and Security in Southeast Asia. In response to Beijing’s enforcement dynamics, Tower said at the time: “Fraud syndicates are increasingly targeting the rest of the world, especially Americans.”

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime male In the past year, fraud centers have diversified their worker pools, shifting from trafficking mostly Chinese nationals and other Chinese speakers to ensnaring people from a wide range of countries and backgrounds who speak different languages. UN researchers attributed this change in part to attackers expanding their targets to include different population groups around the world. But they added that the dynamic also appears to be a reaction to Chinese law enforcement and Beijing’s efforts to protect Chinese citizens.

“China is doing more to combat fraud — such big efforts — than any other country,” says Gary Warner, a longtime digital fraud researcher and director of intelligence at cybersecurity firm DarkTower. “But I agree that the campaign by China on people who defraud China has deflated the balloon, so to speak, and led to more international and US targeting.”

The Chinese government has spent years investing in national safety campaigns to warn citizens about the threat of scams and how to avoid falling victim to them. Some public discourse attempts to appeal to a sense of national solidarity. There is a popular meme in China, 中国人不骗中国人, literally, “Chinese people do not deceive Chinese people” that is used to indicate trust when exchanging restaurant recommendations or job opportunities. In the context of digital fraud, a variant has emerged: “Chinese do not defraud Chinese.”