LETTER FROM BANGKOK
In the movie No More Bets (“the chips are down”), Chinese box office success of summer 2023, young Chinese operating from a dingy but heavily secured complex, located abroad, strive to deceive their compatriots in China by ingenious computer stratagems. With terrible consequences: one of their “pigeons” was so well “shod” by a pretty girl who claims to give him winning tips for various online bets or investments, that he goes broke, pawns the his parents’ apartment, then commits suicide in front of their eyes.
No More Bets served in China as a public health campaign seen and corrected by a Chinese Tarantino: online scams have become the number one priority for the authorities, who have made countless files available to producers. The “little hands” of these frauds, like the young programmer hero of the film, are themselves victims: their passports have been confiscated, those who do not fulfill their objectives are punished; trying to escape exposes them to horrific torture, or worse, at the hands of merciless Chinese thugs.
The lawless zone from which these 2.0 gangsters operate is a fictional country in South-East Asia called Canan: we recognize, in the film, on uniforms, the Khmer and Burmese alphabets. The natives join their hands to greet, as the Thais do. In September, Cambodia and Burma, followed in November by Thailand, officially protested to the Chinese authorities against this “stigma” likely to“scare potential Chinese tourists”. Phnom Penh and Naypyidaw have even banned the distribution of No More Bets. A shame.
Rampant corruption
The reality is that Southeast Asia is plagued by this new form of Chinese organized crime: fleeing police campaigns in China, the online fraud mafia has found in these notoriously corrupt countries, where everything can be bought, and in particular the police, an ideal ecosystem. She also enthusiastically joined the Chinese “new silk roads”, the great economic expansion project of Chinese President Xi Jinping, when, in the midst of a pandemic, he most needed promoters.
Among the alleged or proven “godfathers” of these mafia rings are Chinese entrepreneurs who are highly placed in the representation bodies of the Chinese diaspora co-opted by Beijing, and celebrated in their adopted countries – of which they have acquired nationality – as generous benefactors. The Chinese Zhao Wei, founder of the Golden Triangle special economic zone on the Thai border in Laos, for example, received the Medal of Courage from the Laotian government in 2022 for his “contribution to the defense of public order”.
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