Scam centers remain alive and kicking across Myanmar’s northern Shan State despite Chinese government claims to have eliminated them.
They continue thriving in parts of Shan State controlled by the junta or the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the most powerful ethnic militia in Myanmar, locals say.
In 2023-2024, China successfully clamped down on cyber fraud operations in Kokang, which was by then controlled by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).
Smaller crackdowns continued through February this year in Mongyai and Hopang in northern Shan, but the number of arrests is conspicuously small.
In the first two weeks of February, the junta proudly announced that it had arrested 107 online fraud suspects including 50 Chinese citizens in Mongyai. The UWSA for its part claimed to have arrested “over 100” suspects, mostly Chinese citizens, in Hopang.
“There are still scam operations in northern Shan State,” a local resident said. “Although the Chinese government doesn’t like it, some local administrative authorities allow them because they profit from them. Only in Kokang’s [MNDAA]-controlled towns, scam operations have vanished. In other areas, the operations continue.”
The resident said the businesses are mostly run by Chinese nationals. “We can see them,” he added.
Locals report that they also continue in Muse, a junta-controlled town on the Chinese border.
On March 7, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi boasted at a press conference in Beijing that cyber fraud syndicates have been “eradicated” on the Myanmar side of the border.
Five days after Wang’s statement, the junta announced that another 166 scam suspects, mostly Chinese nationals, were arrested in Tangyan, a town it jointly controls with the UWSA.
On Tuesday, phones used in telecom fraud operations were reportedly confiscated at a bridge connecting UWSA-held Hopang with MNDAA-controlled Chin Shwe Haw. A local source said that this could be connected to the February arrests in Hopang, which forced scam gangs to relocate to MNDAA territory.
From Phaung Sek Bridge, it only takes a few minutes by car or motorbike to the Chin Shwe Haw border crossing. The Kokang capital of Laukkai is just an hour’s drive away.
The regime has declared the fight against cyber scams a “national duty,” and the UWSA is supposed to dance to the tune of China, its primary investor and arms supplier. But there are clearly limits to Beijing’s influence in northeastern and eastern Shan.
International attention has at any rate shifted to a joint crackdown by Thailand, China, and local warlords in Karen State’s Myawaddy. But only some 7,000 have been released from the scam centers there and await processing into Thailand.
Police General Thatchai Pitaneelaboot, who led Thailand’s operations against the cyber hubs, recently said scam centers with up to 100,000 workers are still operating along the Thai-Myanmar border.
