For three days, Wang Xing lived in fear. His head had been shaved. He couldn’t sleep and was in a strange place where his captors forced him to type – the first phase of training for an unwanted role.
The 31-year-old Chinese actor had flown to Bangkok for what he expected to be a movie casting call. Instead, he was picked up at the airport and driven to a scam center in Myanmar’s Myawaddy, a notorious cyber-fraud hub across the border from Thailand.
Wang is among hundreds of thousands of people who have been trafficked into scam compounds – many run by Chinese crime syndicates – that have proliferated in civil war-torn Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia in recent years. Often lured by the promise of well-paying jobs or other enticing opportunities, victims are held against their will and forced to carry out online fraud schemes in heavily guarded compounds, where former detainees say beatings and torture are common.
But Wang considers himself one of the lucky few. On January 7, just days after he was reported missing in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, Thai police said they located him in Myawaddy and brought him back to Thailand, without revealing the details of the operation.
The actor’s subsequent safe return to China has spurred hundreds of Chinese families to call on their government to help find and free their loved ones, who they believe are still trapped in the scam centers. Some have been missing for months or even years.
Wang’s ordeal has also put pressure on Thailand. Chinese tourists are expressing their fears on social media about traveling to the Southeast Asian nation – with some canceling their trips – frustrating Thailand’s efforts to rebuild its pandemic-hit tourism sector, which counts China as its largest and most critical market.
Thai authorities have been in damage control, attempting to reassure worried Chinese tourists that the country is safe.
Upon Wang’s return to Thailand, Thai police officials stood by the actor as he addressed Thai media in English. After asking Wang to thank the Thai government on camera, the official said, “You think Thailand is safe for you, right? Can you speak in Chinese to tell people?”
“Thailand is quite safe, so there’s no need to worry,” Wang replied. “If I have the chance in the future, I will definitely come back here again.”
‘Glimmer of hope’
Shortly after Wang’s rescue, a joint petition from the families of 174 Chinese nationals missing in Myanmar trended on Chinese social media, pleading the government to do more to help bring them home.
“We have no intention of inciting any confrontation; we simply hope to genuinely draw the government’s attention and accelerate efforts to intensify and expedite crackdowns,” the petition said.
A spreadsheet was shared online for family members to fill in details of their loved ones. It has grown from the initial 174 to include more than 1,200 victims.
Among the cases listed is Zhang Huizhen, a 24-year-old fresh graduate who went missing in October on a trip to Thailand and Cambodia. Before she vanished, she shared her location with a friend showing she was near Mae Sot. She also texted her mother, saying she had been busy lately and might not be able to reply to messages promptly, her family said.
Zhang’s family reported her missing to police in their home province of Zhejiang and reached out to the Chinese embassy in Thailand for help, but they have not received any news about her for more than 70 days.
In a video filmed aboard a police plane heading back to Bangkok, Wang said he’d been on a shoot in Thailand in 2018 and didn’t fret over this one too much. It wasn’t until he was pushed into a car by armed men that he began to realize he may have been driven across the border to Myanmar.
Wang said at least 50 people were held in the same building as him. “There were more in another building, and people came from different countries,” he said.
Alarmed by Wang’s disappearance, his girlfriend shared a desperate plea for help online, which racked up hundreds of millions of views and made headlines in state media.
After his release, many Chinese social media users questioned what happened to the dozens of other people also trapped in the compound. “You can’t just save him because he’s famous, right?” said a top comment.
Li Jie, a cousin of 21-year-old Liu Junjie who disappeared in Myawaddy on January 5, said she hoped authorities in China and Thailand would work together to save more victims. “I feel that the power of public opinion is strong, so it gives me hope,” she said.
China has worked with authorities in Myanmar to crack down on scam centers in northern Shan state, near the Chinese border. In 2023, as ethnic rebel groups gained ground against Myanmar’s ruling junta, powerful warlord families – backed by the military to rule the region and oversee these fraud operations – were apprehended and handed to Chinese police.
Chinese authorities say large-scale scam compounds in northern Myanmar have been “completely eradicated,” with more than 53,000 Chinese “suspects” – including trafficked victims – sent back to China.
But many scam centers have moved further south in Myanmar, including to Myawaddy, according to NGOs and experts who have long tracked these criminal operations.
The Civil Society Network for Victim Assistance in Human Trafficking, an NGO based in Thailand, estimates that about 6,000 victims from 21 countries are held under duress at the scam compounds in Myawaddy, including about 3,900 Chinese nationals.
The deluge of headlines has also put pressure on the Hong Kong government to bring home a dozen city residents stranded in the scam canters.
Andy Yu, a former local councilor, who has been advocating for the families since last summer, said the government hadn’t made much progress – until Wang’s rescue.
Hong Kong dispatched a task force to Thailand this week to follow up on their cases. Officials said they had received “an eager response” from the Thai government but no timeline had been set for their rescue.
Travel scares
The publicity around Wang’s case couldn’t have come at a worse time for Thai tourist operators, who had been expecting a surge of arrivals during the Lunar New Year holiday, China’s peak travel season.
But there are signs Chinese tourists are looking elsewhere.
Over the weekend, flight cancellations from China to Thailand surged 150%, Chinese state media reported, citing data from travel analytics firm ForwardKeys. And on Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like Chinese app that is often used for travel advice, users shared tips on how to cancel flights and hotels in Thailand with minimal costs.
A tour operator in southern Guangdong province said he had seen a significant drop in bookings to Thailand following the recent headlines, with reservations for the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday at just 40% of the total this time last year.
Hong Kong pop star Eason Chan canceled his upcoming concert in Bangkok, citing safety concerns for fans. Zhao Benshan, a Chinese comedy titan, also axed his February show in the Thai capital over “safety issues.”
Safety concerns about traveling to Thailand have gained traction in China before, including in early 2023, after the country reopened its borders from the pandemic. Later in the year, “No More Bets,” a Chinese thriller set in an unnamed Southeast Asian country where people are lured to work in scam factories, became a box office hit.
For nearly a decade before the pandemic, China was Thailand’s largest source of foreign tourists. But it saw a sharp drop in Chinese tourists in 2020 when China shut its borders and restricted “non-essential” overseas travel.
Last March, in an effort to boost tourism, the two countries waived visa requirements for each other’s citizens. China reclaimed its position as the top source of visitors in Thailand last year, though the number of Chinese arrivals only recovered to about 60% of pre-pandemic levels.
The latest safety fears sparked by Wang’s abduction could pose a challenge to Thailand’s efforts to further boost that number.
Sisdivachr Cheewarattanaporn, president of the Association of Thai Travel Agents, acknowledged that these concerns would undoubtedly affect the Chinese tourism market, particularly among tour groups. However, he said the extent of the impact remains uncertain.