Wang Xing was 31 years old and thought he was traveling to Bangkok for a film audition.
Instead, armed men forced him into a car at the airport and drove him across the border to Myawaddy, Myanmar, one of the most dangerous cyberfraud hubs in Southeast Asia. They shaved his head, would not let him sleep, and forced him to train to scam people online. At least 50 other people from different countries were locked up in the same building with him.
His girlfriend made a desperate appeal on social media that went viral, garnering hundreds of millions of views, and in just three days the Thai police found him and brought him back. But for thousands of Chinese families, that speed hurt: their own children, siblings, and cousins have been missing for months or years in the same centers, with no one searching for them with the same urgency. “They can’t save him just because he’s famous,” someone wrote on social media. More than 1.200 names have already been added to a list of people no one has been able to bring back.
