A harrowing investigation into how young people are trafficked into scam compoundsn in Southeast Asia, and the journey of one Chinese family seeking justice for their son
The plane taxied slowly through the night air in Chengdu, then lifted off and surged into the dark sky. The lights on the ground grew distant until everything beyond the cabin window turned pitch black. Zhang Hong clutched the hand of her husband, Lao Yuan, as silent tears streamed down her face. During the two-day wait before their departure to Cambodia, local officials in Sichuan repeatedly urged the couple to stay calm: “Cambodia is not China. Crying and shouting won’t solve anything. You must follow local laws. Don’t cause trouble. Don’t bring shame on the Chinese people.”
Since losing contact with their son, Yuan Haixu, on August 15 2024, the couple had done everything they could to prepare for their journey to Southeast Asia to search for him. Early on, they applied for passports. They sought out rescue teams known for retrieving people from cyber scam compounds. Once they learned that bringing their son home would require a hefty ransom, they scrimped and saved—eating less, working overtime, and taking night shifts—in order to amass as much ready money as possible.
Then, while working the nightshift on September 12, the couple received a call from the Chinese Foreign Affairs Office in Cambodia: their son had died. It felt as if the sky had fallen in.
Zhang Hong and Lao Yuan come from Shiyang Town, a predominantly rural area in Sichuan province at the foot of Mount Qingcheng, on the outskirts of the regional city of Dujiangyan. It is a traditional agricultural area. Both husband and wife work as labourers at a local furniture factory. Yuan Haixu, their only child, would have turned fifteen this year. He should have just graduated from middle school.
Last year, Yuan Haixu was publicly scolded by one of the teachers at his school for being a trouble-maker and rule-breaker who didn’t do his homework and had relatively poor grades. “You’re dragging the class down. If you can’t study, then get the hell back home!”, he was told. Deeply humiliated and smarting with anger, Yuan Haixu ran back home. His mother, Zhang Hong, went to speak with the teacher. “We don’t expect much from our child”, she said: “we just hope he stays healthy and safe, and that one day he’ll be by our side in old age.” The teacher said the boy could return to school, but only if he apologised to the class and the teacher in front of everyone. He refused. The family was forced to formally withdraw him from school. After that, Yuan Haixu drifted through society, occasionally picking up odd jobs.
In August, Yuan Haixu told his parents that he had found work in Nanning, a city on China’s southern border. He knew a boss from Dujiangyan, he said, who had opened a branch of a restaurant called the Jin Yong Barbecue. In recent years, horrifying rumours have widely circulated of people being lured to cyber scam compounds in neighbouring Southeast Asian countries and having their organs harvested. When Zhang Hong and Lao Yuan heard their son was heading to work near the border, the couple became concerned for his safety. They stayed in constant contact with him via WeChat during his journey, repeatedly asking him to send them his location.
On August 14, Yuan Haixu went out of contact for an entire day. The couple immediately reported it to the police. The next day, their son sent a location pin for the Xingdao International Residential Complex in Nanning. Zhang Hong and Lao Yuan requested the local authorities intercept him. Anxious and desperate, they boarded the next flight to Nanning themselves. But when they got there, local police said location data from Yuan Haixu’s phone showed he had already crossed into Vietnam. Lao Yuan said they didn’t believe their son had really gone abroad. They kept hoping to find him somewhere in the city.
The couple tried everything: posting missing-person notices in Telegram groups linked to cyber scam compounds, pleading with their bosses to show mercy and release their son in return for a ransom.
On August 17, they
received a voice message on WeChat: “Mum, stop looking for me. I might never be able to come back in this lifetime.” Their son’s odd tone sent shivers through the couple. They immediately contacted the police, pleading with them to rescue their son. But Yuan Haixu hadn’t revealed his location. A few weeks later, with no sign of progress, the couple traveled to Beijing to seek help from the Ministry of Public
Security.
They never expected to receive a notification of their son’s death.
The couple’s plane landed in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh one month to the day after their son had gone missing. The Chinese Embassy sent a driver to pick the group up. The couple were accompanied to Cambodia by one staff member from the Sichuan Foreign Affairs Office, two local government officials from Dujiangyan, and several relatives and friends—seven people in total.
That day, the group visited Cambodia’s Ministry of the Interior and met a department head. Through a translator, the official asked the couple whether they wanted “justice” or simply to bring their son’s body home. When the couple insisted on accountability, saying they wanted to “seek justice” for their son, the official replied that they would first arrange for them to see the boy’s body.
The couple didn’t just rely on official channels in Cambodia. They also turned to a civilian rescuer named Chen for help. Chen, originally from the Chinese province of Hubei and just over fifty, had been doing business in Cambodia for many years. In 2020, after being scammed himself, Chen began taking part in rescue efforts to help people who had been trafficked into Cambodia’s cyber scam compounds.
Chen asked the couple a question similar to the one the Cambodian official had posed. He urged them to look ahead, to be more realistic. He told them that the situation in Cambodia was complex, and they might not get the outcome they hoped for. He said he could help them negotiate compensation with the compound. The couple firmly refused.
Yuan Haixu’s body had been transported to the morgue of a temple in Phnom Penh. It was there that the couple saw their son’s corpse, covered in signs of severe beating and electric shocks. To this day, Zhang Hong cannot hold back her sobs when she talks of it, her voice filled with rage. The child’s entire body had been beaten black and blue. No part had been left untouched. Circular wounds made by electric batons had begun to cave into holes, the flesh rotting. Her son’s head was so swollen as to be unrecognisable. The Cambodian police report put the cause of death as severe trauma to the head.
Seeing the couple overwhelmed with grief, the official from the Ministry of the Interior gave Yuan Haixu’s family the phone number of the police officer in Kandal Province in charge of the case. They were told to file a request with the local authorities and directly contact the officer handling the case to learn the specific details.
According to the readout from the Cambodian police investigation, the Jinwan compound had voluntarily called the police on August 19, 2024 to report a death. They presented records showing that on August 17, 18, and 19, Yuan Haixu had received medical treatment within the compound and that he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
The police relayed the compound’s account of the sequence of events: during a meal, the boy suddenly collapsed and hit his head on the ground, sustaining the injuries from which he later died. Zhang Hong, holding back the urge to lash out, calmly asked the Cambodian officer a simple question: “Do you really believe he died from a fall during a meal? How could his body be covered with injuries like that if he just fell asleep while eating?” Seeing her determination, the police officer’s attitude changed:“I don’t believe it either—that’s why we’re still investigating.”
There is precedent for the Cambodian police mishandling such cases. In August 2024, in Pailin Province, a scam compound boss reported a man named Zhou Chunhua to police, claiming he had stolen company property. After mediation by the police failed, Zhou was found dead, his body badly beaten. The local police chief, Seng Sokun, instructed his subordinates to alter the cause of death to suggest Zhou had committed suicide and not been subjected to torture –an attempt to avoid having to pursue the matter further.
The details of the case were later exposed by Cambodian internet celebrity journalist Pheng Vannak, sparking widespread public attention. A full investigation only took place after intervention by
Sar Kheng, at once Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Interior, and Chairman of the Anti-Human Trafficking Committee.
The dark purple bruises on Yuan Haixu’s corpse resembled those seen in the publicly circulated photos of Zhou Chunhua. “The marks were all over his body,” Zhang Hong told me.
The storage conditions at the temple in Phnom Penh were extremely poor. The corpse had been placed on a large block of ice. When they tried to turn it over to examine the injuries on the back, the skin stuck to the ice. They couldn’t bear to force it. “But we saw the photos of the body that the police showed us,” Zhang Hong says: “I knew that if I didn’t restrain myself—if I cried and shouted –we wouldn’t get any help.”
After Yuan Haixu’s death, the compound locked his friend Li—who had been trafficked into the compound at the same time and was his roommate—into a lightless isolation room. Li, also a minor from Dujiangyan, was later rescued from the compound by Chen. After returning to China, he told Yuan Haixu’s parents what he had witnessed.
Li said that aside from the first day, Yuan was beaten every single day after arriving at the compound. Someone had discovered he was hiding a fruit knife. The person in charge of new arrivals cross-examined him, asking if he intended to kill someone, and subjected him to prolonged beatings over several days.
On his last day, Yuan Haixu was lying in bed, barely conscious. The compound supervisor thought he was faking it to avoid work. He propped him up against the head of the bed and beat him again—using plastic rods to strike his back and legs, and delivering violent kicks to his abdomen and head. He repeatedly told him that “the company doesn’t support idle people,” and asked him if he was willing to work. Yuan said he was. Even so, they dragged him to the training yard and beat him again.
Later, Yuan said he wanted something to eat. The supervisor told his roommate to bring him some egg fried rice. Yuan ate a few bites but couldn’t finish it. The supervisor, thinking he was playing games, took this as an insult and struck him again, causing Yuan Haixu to vomit black blood. Not long after being taken to the compound’s clinic, a call came from the hospital: he had died.
Yuan Haixu’s friend’s account was confused and disjointed. Sichuan police tried to comfort Zhang Hong by saying that the boy had been locked up for too long and was likely traumatised—what he said might not be entirely reliable. The child was clearly mentally affected, Zhong Hang says: even being asked a question would trigger an extreme reaction, becoming so agitated he repeatedly slapped himself. He received no psychological support or counselling after returning home.
When Zhang Hong recalls the phone call her son made on August 17, she breaks down in tears. She says she could not begin to imagine how desperate and helpless her son must have felt at that moment.
There weren’t many videos or photos of Cambodia on the couple’s phones. Zhang Hong showed me a short video taken along the Mekong River. The camera pans slowly over the wide, muddy water, lingering on a few white buildings on the distant skyline. She said they had no photos at all. Their phones were confiscated when they entered the police station, and again when they went to the temple to see the body and attend the cremation.
The cremation at the Cambodian temple used traditional wood-burning methods. They couldn’t collect ashes. They only managed to pick out a few larger bones, which they placed in an urn, and carried back home. The rest—ashes mixed with burnt wood—was scattered into the Mekong. The couple recorded a video of the moment, as a keepsake: “I welcomed you into this world with joy. I never thought I would one day, torn apart inside, be the one to send you away.”
Even now, missing-person notices posted by the couple on August 17 and August 24, 2024, can still be found in various Telegram groups related to northern Myanmar and Southeast Asia. With a hoarse, choked voice, Zhang Hong says: “they didn’t give me a chance. I would have given up everything I own to ransom my child. They didn’t give him even the slightest chance to live—they beat him to death.”
The Jinwan compound where Yuan Haixu died is located in Chrey Thom, Kandal Province, Cambodia—about 68 kilometres from Phnom Penh, roughly an hour and a half by car. The town sits on the border, close to Vietnam, and is filled with casinos and cyber scam compounds: Jinyun, Jinsha, Jinze, Jinwan… Yet in early 2023, Chou Bun Eng, First Vice Chair of Cambodia’s National Committee for Counter Trafficking (NCCT), said in an interview that she was unaware of any cyber scam compounds at all in the Chrey Thom area.
In August last year, Cambodia announced it would launch a crackdown on online gambling and cyber scammers within its borders. Observers remained skeptical. Then, in October 2024, after South Korean media had exposed the illegal detention of several South Korean nationals in Kampong Speu’s Mango Park, Dy Vichea—the Deputy Commissioner General of the National Police, Director of the Central Security Department, and the son-in-law of Prime Minister Hun Sen—led a massive police raid on the compound. Over 1,000 foreigners, most of them Chinese, were arrested.
But what really shocked the public was that, not long after, Cambodian police announced there were no illegal activities at all taking place in Mango Park, and the majority of those who had been detained were released. Only 25 individuals were sent for trial. A police spokesperson said reports of South Koreans or others being kidnapped or tortured in Kampong Speuk Province were false.
Vitit Muntarbhorn, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia, noted in his most recent report that corruption in Cambodia has damaged both the perceived and actual independence and fairness of national institutions, including the judiciary. Cambodia’s efforts to combat online fraud and human trafficking had, as he put it, “gone off target.” During his 2022 visit to the country he said victims of human trafficking were experiencing a “living hell”: many subjected to torture and some killed.
A report released in May 2024 by the United States Institute of Peace entitled Transnational Crime in Southeast Asia: A Growing Threat to Global Peace and Security reported that Cambodia’s gambling and scam industry accounts for nearly half of the country’s GDP. This may be one reason for the Cambodian government’s lacklustre response.
A ccompanied by local officials from their hometown, Zhang Hong and Lao Yuan went to the Chinese Embassy in Cambodia to meet embassy staff responsible for consular protection, Zhao Haiyan and Jiang Peng.
Cambodia is a sovereign country, they explained: China has no law enforcement authority there, the embassy can only urge Cambodian police to investigate. (This is the standard response from the embassies in both Cambodia and Myanmar when they receive requests for assistance.) The embassy Weibo accounts in both countries, but especially Myanmar, are flooded with desperate pleas for help: “Please save my younger brother, he’s in Kaung Mang’ Leen’, gets beaten every day”; “My 16-year-old and two other kids from the Shiyan area have been missing for over ten days in Mong La, Myanmar…”
At the same time, embassy officials tried to comfort the couple, saying, “Ambassador Wang Wenbin of the Chinese Embassy in Cambodia was very angry when he heard about this case” and “After the incident, he brought up the issue of minors in scam compounds during meetings with Cambodian officials—though he didn’t specifically mention your case…”
After the dismantling of scam syndicates in Laukkai, northern Myanmar, in October 2023, several other compounds in the region—including in the Golden Triangle of Laos, Myawaddy’s Asia-Pacific City in Myanmar, the KK Park, and Huanya Park—announced they had prohibited the employment of minors. Under this new dispensation, minors in scam compounds were generally allowed to return home without ransom payment. Who qualified as a minor was based on a person’s age at the time they entered the compound. But not all were, in fact, released.
According to a report by Henan Television, on April 8, 2023, then-17-year-old Pei Xiaolong was trafficked into a cyber scam compound in Myawaddy. But it wasn’t till the end of 2024—after he began showing signs of mental instability—that the compound agreed to release him in exchange for a ransom of 200,000 yuan.
After his family placed the ransom at the designated location, Xiaolong was sent to Mae Sot, Thailand, just across the border. When his parents finally managed to see him—a boy who had been trapped in the compound for a year and a half and sold four times—it was at the local district hospital, covered in injuries.
On seeing his parents, the boy’s expression was blank. He let his mother pull down his pants in public to check the scars and hardened tissue covering his buttocks and thighs—offering no resistance at all. Thai volunteers said the hospital had treated the physical injuries, but there was nothing they could do for the psychological trauma. That would have to be dealt with carefully after he returned home. Xiaolong walked with a hunched back and lowered head. His movements were slow, lifeless. He had even forgotten how to walk normally.
Xiaolong was held in the compound for more than a year. During that period, he contacted his parents only three times. By the last, he was no longer speaking. A friend in the compound sent his parents a video showing Xiaolong’s thigh, swollen and festering with infection after being beaten. Devastated, his parents did everything they could—taking out loans and scraping together whatever money they could—in order to ransom their son.
Cases like Xiaolong’s—minors who entered scam compounds and were trapped for over a year before their families managed to find the resources to rescue them and bring them home—are not uncommon. Following several waves of police crackdowns, some scam compounds retreated into more remote areas such as Tangyan, Wanhai, and Laihka, where they receive protection from small, local armed groups who rule over the mountains like warlords. These compounds hide in makeshift shelters deep in the forests and mountains, use Starlink for internet access, and keep moving—complicating rescue efforts. During the summer vacation of 2024, the
trafficking of minors into cyber scam compounds in Cambodia,
Wa State, and other regions began to grow again.
Since the case of Chinese actor Wang Xing grabbed the public’s attention—known online as the “Star Incident”, involving the actor’s trafficking and speedy release—others began to publicly share the stories of family members trapped in scam compounds. A shared online document entitled “Star Homecoming Project” began to circulate. By the time updates stopped, over 1,200 families had filled it in, including dozens of cases involving minors. Yuan Haixu’s family was among those who submitted the form.
Most of the cases involving minors date from 2024, but some were older cases involving individuals who had since become adults. About half of the victims had left China from Yunnan province. The majority were trapped in Tangyan and Wanhai in Wa State, followed by Myawaddy in eastern Myanmar. Victims who had been sold multiple times often ended up in Myawaddy.
One striking feature of the data is that over one-third of the individuals were by this point completely out of contact—highlighting how vulnerable minors are and how limited their ability to protect themselves. The most recent case occurred in January 2025, in a Cambodian compound. Zhang Bozhi, a 17-year-old high school student, flew from Zhengzhou to Nanning on January 2, 2025, and then crossed the border.
His phone’s IP address later showed a location in Cambodia. He has been out of contact ever since.
M ost minors who are lured to scam compounds in northern Myanmar and elsewhere are victims of “betrayal by acquaintances”—one person pulling in another, eventually forming a network.
In Dazhou, Sichuan, nine parents collectively spoke to the media, tearfully revealing that their underage children had been sold to scam compounds and subjected to abuse. More than 40 children from their area had been trafficked, they said. After Xioalong’s return from Myawaddy, his father helped the police track down the trafficker who had sold his son—the trafficker had already handled over a hundred victims.
The person who trafficked Yuan Haixu to Cambodia was also from his hometown. That summer, before he travelled to Nanning, Yuan Haixu had been working a summer job with four or five classmates. Because his workplace was over 40 kilometres from home, his family worried about him commuting every day. The boss arranged a rented room for Yuan Haixu and treated him well. Yuan would still come home every few days, so his parents didn’t think much of it.
During their free time, the couple even tried to visit their son to see where he was working, but he always came up with another excuse to avoid seeing them. They assumed it was just teenage independence—that their son was growing up and didn’t want his parents interfering too much. Zhang Hong says: “Looking back now, it’s terrifying to realise how the traffickers manipulated him, step by step.”
The traffickers were all from Dujiangyan. Zhang Hong had heard of the group—known for spending lavishly and with a reputation for doing well locally. Their main technique is the exploitation of personal connections. If the victim is someone they met online, they may spend more than six months building up a relationship—“fattening the pig”—crafting the image of someone successful and wealthy. They lure young people in with good food, fun experiences, and sometimes even encourage drug use to trap them.
A Long, who has helped rescue over a thousand people from scam compounds, told reporters: “Young people with high debt, eager to make quick money, with low education, from poor families, and especially those who are very young—these are the ones who most often fall into the trap.” Zhao Juncheng, a 16-year-old from Sichuan, was working with his parents in Zhejiang. After graduating from middle school, he became an apprentice at a barbershop. Through online gaming, he met someone who promised he could earn 100,000 to 150,000 yuan per trip by delivering goods to the border region. On August 15, 2024, Zhao traveled from Hangzhou to Kunming, then continued on to Pu’er and Menglian. His last known location was in Mong La, northern Myanmar. As of November 2024, Zhao Juncheng had still not left the compound or returned to his family.
Promises of “free travel” and “high income” are all traps. Once they are there, the costs of the airfare or private car rides, food, lodging, transportation, and smuggling fees all become debts owed to the traffickers. Inside the compound, victims are forced to sign exploitative long-term contracts. To break the contract incurs hefty penalties. These two debts—travel costs and contract penalties—make up what is commonly known as the “ransom” needed to get someone out. If minors take out loans from the company, they are not allowed to leave until the debt is repaid. Some, realising they’ve reached a dead end, simply tell their families to forget about them and not to pay the ransom.
Minors who have little life experience are unable to cope with the intimidation of massive debts and physical threats. They are easily brainwashed by the compounds, and can even end up becoming core members of criminal operations themselves. In 2023, three 14-year-olds and one 17-year-old from Guangxi were trafficked to Tachileik. The trafficker was a local youth—a 16-year-old who had previously been deceived and taken to northern Myanmar. In a recent case uncovered in Bangkok, Thailand, involving SIMbox-based
telecom fraud, the head of the
scam operation was a Chinese youth of nineteen.
UNICEF has noted that certain border areas in countries within the Greater Mekong Subregion serve as major sources, destinations, and transit points for human trafficking. It is estimated that this region alone accounts for about one-third of global human trafficking crime—much of it involving minors.
Police in Sichuan are still investigating how Yuan Haixu came to be trafficked.
According to Zhang Hong and her husband, four individuals have been arrested for “organising and transporting others to illegally cross the national border.” The couple strongly disagrees with this characterisation, and what it implies about what happened. They believe their son was sold to Cambodia—and that these individuals should straightforwardly be considered human traffickers.
Xiaolong, who was recognised by Thai authorities as a victim of human trafficking, had been sold by a trafficker whom his father later helped the police arrest. Xiaolong’s father referred to this person as a “snakehead”. In fact, the term “snakehead” is technically defined as someone who facilitates illegal immigration or border-crossing, but does not directly participate in the buying or selling of human beings.
Internationally, human
trafficking is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of persons for the purpose of exploitation, by means of force, threats, or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power, or exploitation of a position of vulnerability. This definition includes not only the buyers and sellers but also those involved in transporting, transferring, or harbouring the victims.
In China, not only are the definitions of ‘human trafficker’ and ‘snakehead’ often confused, but there is also ongoing debate among experts over how trafficking-related crimes should be charged—such as whether the buyer and seller should bear equal legal responsibility in cases of trafficking women and children. In domestic cases involving women and children, it is difficult to convict the buyer if there is no evidence of abuse. And in cases of transnational human trafficking or forced labour involving males over the age of 14, Chinese law makes it especially difficult to convict traffickers.
Since returning to China, Zhang Hong and Lao Yuan have been doing the rounds of lawyers and law firms to understand the situation. “Our laws have loopholes,” they wrote to me on WeChat. “China doesn’t have a law against human trafficking—only the crime of ‘abducting and trafficking women and children.’ The lawyers said that in this law, ‘children’ refers to those under 14. Our son was 15. It doesn’t apply.”
Responding to parents’ calls for harsher punishment of offenders, civil rights lawyer Bao Longjun has told reporters that if the buyer commits crimes such as unlawful detention, forced labour, or intentional injury, the person who trafficked them could be charged as an accomplice and punished accordingly. But an earlier interview with Professor Han Yusheng, a legal scholar at Renmin University of China, said that convicting the seller as an accomplice would be difficult under current law, as it would not meet the legal criteria for “shared intent” and “coordinated action.” The seller neither intended nor participated in the subsequent illegal acts. Professor Han argued that the absence of a specific human trafficking offence in China’s Criminal Code is “a legislative oversight.”
China’s 1979 Criminal Code did include the crime of human trafficking. In 1991, an amended version added the crime of “abducting and trafficking women and children”. A 1997 revision removed “human trafficking”. There have been calls for its reinstatement since. In 2010, a scandal in Qu County, Sichuan Province, revealed that a shelter had sold mentally disabled individuals to chemical factories in Xinjiang as indentured labourers. The case sparked public outcry and demands for the trafficking offence to be restored. Three years before that, the nation was shocked by a case where hundreds of migrant workers, including many children, were sold into slavery at brick kilns in Shanxi province. The Ministry of Public Security classified the case as “illegal employment” leading to widespread outrage and prompting revisions to the national Labour Contract Law the same year.
Cambodia has taken a similar approach—refusing to acknowledge that cyber scam compounds involve human trafficking or forced labour, and framing them instead as contract disputes. Having signed a contract with the scammers, when individuals are detained within the compound, their detention can be termed as being due to “financial disputes.” At a recent anti-trafficking meeting, Chou Bun Eng of Cambodia’s NCCT reiterated that these cases are complex, involving questions of fraud, labour disputes, illegal employment and illegal immigration. She accused some individuals of pretending to be “victims” and providing false testimony to evade legal punishment for their acts.
The number of human trafficking cases officially counted as such by the NCCT remains low: only 104 cases of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in the first half of 2024. Police tallied just 290 victims—134 of them under the age of 18—an increase of 16% on the same period for the previous year.
China’s most powerful tools for cooperating with the international community to combat cyber fraud and human trafficking in Southeast Asia are the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000) and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000, also known as the Palermo Protocol). China is a signatory to both, but its domestic laws conflict with the convention in two key areas, made especially clear in the case of Yuan Haixu:
First, victims of human trafficking are not adequately protected. China has not established a national referral mechanism to identify victims and provide them with protection and assistance. Another minor who was rescued and brought back to China received no corresponding social support.
Second, there is no legal category for the crime of human trafficking in China, meaning traffickers cannot be properly punished. The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons requires that “human trafficking” itself be treated as a criminal offense. As a serious crime, it should carry severe penalties—but in China, offenders can only be prosecuted for “organising others to illegally cross the border.”
When the Chinese government released China’s Action Plan against Human Trafficking in 2013, it had already changed the language from “combating trafficking of women and children” to “combating human trafficking.” In April 2021, the updated version proposed revising relevant laws and regulations, and incorporating an anti-human trafficking law into the legislative plan of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. But despite the pressure to align domestic laws with international norms, China has so far taken no further steps to amend its Criminal Law to establish the standalone crime of human trafficking.
There are political considerations at stake here. For example, the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report has listed China among the countries with the most severe human trafficking problems for eight consecutive years. The report links human trafficking to the Xinjiang issue, making it politically sensitive.
Then there is the recent surge in cross-border brides. Amending the Criminal Code would make it easier to convict buyers. China’s gender imbalance has meant that large numbers of women are brought in from Southeast Asia, Pakistan, and other countries each year. There are an estimated 100,000 Vietnamese brides alone in China; 21% of these cases are linked to human trafficking. Experts such as Liu Ling and Li Guangyi at the Development Research Center of the State Council, note that the majority of such women have already entered de facto marriages with their purchasers in China, had children, and established stable families. Forced repatriation or rescue could create a wave of high profile and socially controversial incidents.
In the meantime, a human rights-based approach to human trafficking remains absent. The authorities often take a hardline, punitive approach toward trafficking victims, including for crimes they may have been coerced into committing during their captivity. They are reluctant to adopt international standards for victim identification and exemption from punishment. In some regions—such as Guizhou—victims who remained in scam compounds for more than 30 days are automatically treated as having committed “serious offenses.”
Z hang Hong and Lao Yuan can sometimes feel worn down by what seems like a losing battle with a foregone conclusion. But with the death of their son, the only thing which gives their continued
existence meaning is to seek “justice” for him.
They have discussed hiring a civil rights lawyer from outside their region to move things forward. “The case is being completely suppressed. There’s almost no exposure at all.” Some time ago, a Sichuan-based anti-fraud influencer known as ‘Loving King’ (爱心大王) briefly brought attention to the case. But just one day later, the couple received a call from him. He apologised and said he had been contacted by police and instructed to take down his video. Left with no other platform, Zhang Hong and Lao Yuan continue to post videos about Yuan Haixu on Douyin themselves.
The couple is deeply worried—first, about financial pressure. Each trip—to petition in Beijing, to report to police in Nanning, to contact rescue teams –represents a mounting cost. But what they fear even more is becoming a target of the police’s ‘stability maintenance’ efforts. “Yesterday, Hong Xing Media came to interview us, but the reporter didn’t dare publish anything. They recommended a media outlet in Shanghai instead.” “In a few days, the Shanghai outlet will come to interview us. We don’t know whether they’ll dare to report it—or whether, even if they do, the report will ever be published.”
In October 2024, the couple once again boarded a flight to Beijing, seeking to petition the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security, and the State Council. An update from the officer handling the case a few days earlier suggested that the person who trafficked their son had only recently started this “business” and trafficked just three people—below the threshold for “serious circumstances” under the crime of organising and transporting persons across the border. Meanwhile, there has been no response from Cambodia, and their son’s death has completely disappeared from both Chinese and Cambodian media coverage. The couple feels law enforcement are powerless at this point: “The police have made many phone calls, asking us not to petition anymore.”
After returning from Beijing, the couple spoke with them again. The officers repeatedly assured them that the case was still under investigation and asked them to give it more time. But at home, without their child’s presence and laughter, the emptiness feels even deeper. “I can’t bear to stay at home even for a single day,” Zhang Hong says. The couple have returned to work at the factory. In her spare time, Zhang Hong posts on Douyin, sharing her grief and longing for her son.
The last time she did, the couple was contacted by the police and government officials, making three requests: stop posting on Douyin; cease all contact with Southeast Asia and give them some time; trust that the government will handle the case properly. The police said they would reach out to Ambassador Wang Wenbin at the embassy in Cambodia in hopes of resolving things that way.
Wang Wenbin, who was newly appointed as China’s ambassador to Cambodia in July 2024, is the former spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Known for his “gentle and refined” demeanor, paired with a ‘wolf warrior’ image, he has been widely admired by netizens, who affectionately call him “Uncle Wang.” Zhang Hong asked me, “I really like Ambassador Wang Wenbin—I’m a fan of his. If we can get his attention, do you think this matter could be resolved?”
In fact, China and Cambodia already have a law enforcement cooperation framework under the
Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) mechanism to combat cyber fraud and the associated issue of human trafficking. China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam are all participants in the ‘Safe Lancang-Mekong Operation,’ a joint initiative under the LMC aimed at cracking down on online gambling, telecom fraud, and related crimes. As early as 2019, China and Cambodia launched a policing partnership and established the China-Cambodia Law Enforcement Cooperation Coordination Office in Phnom Penh. It was the first bilateral police cooperation centre set up by China’s police anywhere in the world.
Despite this, from the anti-cyber fraud campaigns launched by police since September 2023 to the most recent “Operation Seagull”, the authorities have not made the issue of human trafficking—nor the rescue of its victim—an explicit focus. Online, there has been widespread coverage of Xiaolong, who was beaten and abused in the Myawaddy compound until his mental health deteriorated. In contrast, there’s been virtual silence around the case of Yuan Haixu, who died in a Cambodian compound.
Yet there is some tentative evidence that the parents’ campaign to petition the Chinese government is beginning to pay off. One parent of a trafficked minor told reporters that police are currently investigating the situation of minors trapped in scam compounds in Myanmar and Cambodia. On January 15 2025, in the wake of the “Star Incident,” China’s Ministry of Public Security issued a public notice stating that it is “conducting a comprehensive review of cases involving Chinese citizens missing or trapped overseas” and “making every effort to coordinate the rescue of those detained.” It marked the first time Chinese authorities had used such language when addressing the issue of transnational telecom fraud.
