Editor's note: Xia Fangbo, a special commentator for CGTN, is a lecturer at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy of the Beijing Foreign Studies University. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The United States has recently intensified the use of criminal investigations, financial restrictions, and international partnerships against scam-center networks connected to Southeast Asia. That is a legitimate response to a serious threat. But some foreign coverage has seized on the presence of Chinese nationals, Chinese-language communications, or Chinese backgrounds among some suspects to promote a much broader claim that China is the "source" of telecom fraud. This is a misleading shortcut. It turns a complex, transnational criminal ecosystem into a national label, and it risks teaching global audiences precisely the wrong lesson about how these crimes work.

There should be no ambiguity about individual accountability. The proper targets of an investigation are the people and entities that finance, organize, recruit, provide technical services for, launder the proceeds of, or protect a criminal operation. A US Justice Department action in September against an online marketplace allegedly supplying scam-center services illustrates the point. Its alleged services included website creation, virtual-asset laundering and recruitment; the related investigation also reached Madagascar. What emerges is a service network across jurisdictions, not a criminal phenomenon that can sensibly be reduced to one country.

The industry's human geography makes this even clearer. In 2023, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported credible estimates that at least 120,000 people in Myanmar and around 100,000 in Cambodia may have been forced to carry out online scams. It documented victims from Southeast Asia, China, South Asia, and even further afield from Africa and Latin America. A 2026 UN Human Rights report cited credible estimates of torture and rape in Southeast Asia's multi-billion-dollar scam centers, affecting hundreds of thousands of people from at least 66 countries. It also cautioned that reliable data remain difficult to obtain and that serious gaps persist in the screening of people released from compounds. The figure therefore is an estimate of the workforce involved in the industry, not proof that every worker is an identified trafficking victim.

Evidence from the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) points in the same direction. By March 2025, trafficking victims taken to online scam centers had come from 66 countries. By late 2025, the organization reported that trafficked victims spanned nearly 80 nationalities. The model, initially concentrated in Southeast Asia, has been observed in the Middle East, West Africa and Central America. INTERPOL notes that many of the earliest trafficking victims were Chinese-speaking and from Asia, but that victims have since been trafficked from South America, Western Europe and Eastern Africa, while local and regional groups have adopted similar methods. This is a globalizing criminal model, not a national export.

That distinction is not an attempt to excuse criminals. It is necessary to identify them accurately. Scam centers often produce two groups of victims: people who lose their savings to investment fraud, romance baiting, impersonation,or other scams, and people who are lured by false job advertisements, trapped through debt or violence, and forced to commit fraud. Treating everyone inside a compound as a willing offender can conceal the trafficking and forced-labor systems that sustain the business. Blaming the nationality of some organizers as the root cause can obscure the cross-border flows of money, communications, data, recruitment and official protection that make the business scalable. Criminal responsibility belongs to individuals and organizations, not to national identities.

The industry is resilient because it is not a collection of isolated cases. It resembles a cross-border supply chain: Recruiters look for workers where they can find them; operators establish bases where enforcement is difficult, or governance is weak; digital tools reach victims worldwide; underground banks, shell companies and virtual assets help move the proceeds. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that cyber-enabled scams targeting victims in East and Southeast Asia caused financial losses of between $18 billion and $37 billion in 2023 alone, with a predominant proportion attributed to organized crime groups in Southeast Asia. Its assessments also describe how enforcement pressure can drive networks to relocate and reconfigure their financial and technological infrastructure. Closing a compound without disrupting recruitment, communications and laundering simply creates an incentive to reopen elsewhere.

China is not a bystander in this fight. Its citizens have been victimized by cross-border fraud, and its law-enforcement authorities have worked with regional partners to investigate, dismantle and prosecute relevant networks. In October 2025, China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said that China-Myanmar cooperation against fraud in northern Myanmar and deeper inside the country had led to the arrest of more than 57,000 Chinese fraud suspects, with cases related to all four major criminal gangs based in the Kokang region of Myanmar entering the judicial process. In July 2026, China, Myanmar and Thailand agreed at a ministerial meeting to continue joint action against Myawaddy and other telecom fraud hubs; the three sides reported that more than 5,400 Chinese fraud suspects had been apprehended and repatriated during the year. These are not the actions of a government turning a blind eye to crime by its nationals. They are evidence of case-based cooperation, evidence-sharing, repatriation and prosecution.

China's cooperation is not confined to its immediate neighborhood. In April 2026, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that an operation involving the FBI, Dubai Police and China's MPS resulted in at least 276 arrests and the dismantlement of at least nine scam centers alleged to have conducted cryptocurrency investment fraud. In September, the US DOJ said that after a Madagascar operation that it supported, about 30 Chinese leaders of scam compounds were repatriated to China among nearly 400 people arrested. Courts, not press releases, must ultimately determine individual guilt. Yet the public record already establishes an important fact: China, the United States and other partners can, and in specific cases do, cooperate operationally against these networks.

China is also seeking to turn bilateral and regional experience into a broader mechanism. On September 10, 2026, the International Alliance Combating Telecom and Cyber Fraud, initiated by the Chinese government, was established in Lianyungang, eastern China. The founding meeting brought together 46 founding countries, 34 observer countries and representatives of four international organizations, including the United Nations and INTERPOL. Its value will not be measured by rhetoric. It will be measured by whether it makes case leads, joint pursuit of fugitives, asset recovery, professional training and coordinated operations more routine, and whether those efforts extend from the compounds themselves to recruitment, technology and money-laundering chains.

The wider international response is moving in a similar direction. In September, the United States and the United Kingdom signed a Memorandum of Understanding to conduct parallel investigations, share information and coordinate jurisdictions for common targets. ASEAN adopted its Declaration on Combating Cybercrime and Online Scams in 2025. The United Nations Convention against Cybercrime, adopted by the General Assembly in 2024 and opened for signature in 2025, sets out a global framework for cooperation and the sharing of electronic evidence in serious crimes, subject to its entry-into-force provisions. INTERPOL has likewise argued that action against scam centers must address their links with trafficking, cybercrime and financial crime, including through rapid mechanisms to block illicit flows in both fiat and virtual assets.

A credible global response should follow four principles: It should enable faster cross-border tracing, freezing and confiscation of suspicious funds and virtual assets; it should require platforms, exchanges, banks and telecom operators to detect, preserve and share evidence of criminal abuse within the law; it should connect anti-fraud enforcement with victim identification, non-punishment safeguards, safe return and protection for trafficked people; and it should strengthen mutual legal assistance, joint investigations and capacity-building in jurisdictions that are most vulnerable to criminal displacement. That is how raids on compounds can durably disrupt the system behind them.

Scam crime has no borders, and neither do its victims. Describing Southeast Asian scam centers as the "product" of a single country may offer a convenient political slogan, but it ignores how criminal networks move across borders, how their victims are spread across continents and how responsibility for governance is shared. Rejecting the stigmatizing claim that China is the "source" of telecom fraud does not mean avoiding accountability for any Chinese citizen who has committed a crime. It means insisting on evidence-based accountability, directed at actual criminal actors and supported by practical international cooperation. Less national stigmatization and more joint enforcement, financial tracing, technology governance and victim protection: That is the only route to a safer world.

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