What is the relation between Cambodia’s human trafficking scam and China’s Belt and Road Initiatives?

September 7, 2022 Cambodia Crime & Legal

Thousands of victims across Asia have been lured by job scams and occasionally love cons, through messaging apps, kidnapped and forced to work for the scam network in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, a special economic zone under China’s Belt and Road Initiatives.

Following the arrest of She Zhijiang, a wanted Chinese billionaire running a mega gambling ring across Asia, by Bangkok police in mid-August 2022, Cambodia’s human trafficking and scam operations dominated headlines in many Asia countries, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, Malaysia, Vietnam and more, as their citizens have been conned and enslaved through a cross-border crime network.

If the victims refused to work for the scam network, they would be tortured or even sold from one criminal group to another, and some were eventually trafficked to Shwe Kokko, a new city project fuelled by the Chinese capital in the Karen State of Myanmar near the Thai border.

Protected by a local armed group (Saw Chit Thu’s Border Guard Forces), the lawless city has become an online gambling and scam hub targeting gamers from mainland China where gambling is illegal.

Mainland Chinese investors and fugitives in Belt and Road Initiatives
The recently arrested Chinese billionaire She Zhijiang is the biggest investor in Sihanoukville and Shwe Kokko.

According to a report from mainland Chinese finance news outlet Caixin in 2020, Zhijiang has been listed as a fugitive by mainland Chinese authorities since 2012 for operating an online gambling business. Yet somehow he managed to set up a company, Yatai International Holding Group Limited, in Hong Kong in 2017 and presented himself as a key investor in the mainland Chinese Belt and Road Initiatives. Yatai has made many gambling-related investments, including resort and hotel compounds, in Myanmar, Cambodia and the Philippines. Zhijiang will be extradited to mainland China for trial.