China dials up efforts against telecom, online fraud with month-long nationwide campaign

SINGAPORE: China has launched a month-long nationwide campaign to combat telecommunications and online fraud as it keeps up a crackdown on such scams which have led to tens of billions of dollars in financial losses.

The awareness drive that went live on Monday (Jun 24) aims to “strengthen anti-fraud awareness” and to enhance the public's ability to identify and prevent fraud, said the Ministry of Public Security. 

Local authorities will organise grassroots outreach efforts as part of the initiative - targeting communities, villages, families, schools and enterprises, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Officials will also publish common types of telecom fraud and their methods. Meanwhile, targeted programmes will be conducted for high-risk groups such as minors, the elderly, enterprises and people working in finance.

More than 60 per cent of telecom fraud victims in 2023 were aged between 18 and 40, Chinese media outlet The Paper reported on Tuesday (Jun 25). About a third of the total victims that year were aged 41 to 65.

According to Xinhua, the authorities will also highlight criminal cases to educate members of the public, so that they can avoid becoming the “tools” and “accomplices” of scammers.

The anti-scam efforts also extend abroad. During the month-long campaign, a “handbook” by multiple government agencies will be published, aimed at helping overseas Chinese students and communities identify and prevent fraud.

China has been confronting a rise in telecom scams in recent years, similar to that faced by other countries in Asia.

As of May this year, China has cracked down on 543,000 telecom and network fraud cases and arrested a “large number” of suspects involved, said the Ministry of Public Security on its website on Monday. It did not specify whether this tally was from the start of the year or before that.

The ministry also hailed the “historic progress” made in cracking down on telecom fraud involving Chinese suspects in Myanmar, highlighting that over 49,000 of them have been handed over by the Southeast Asian nation to date.

It singled out the crackdown on the “four families” in Kokang in northern Myanmar, referring to noted criminal groups operating in the area close to the Chinese border.

More than 100,000 foreign nationals, many of them Chinese, were estimated to have been lured to work in scam centres there, according to a BBC News report late last year.

China’s National Anti-Fraud Center has intercepted 3.7 billion scam calls and 2.98 billion scam-related messages to date, said the Ministry of Public Security. A total of 452.9 billion yuan (US$62.4 billion) in funds has also been “intercepted”.

According to The Paper, fake rebate scams, false online investments, fake shopping services and e-commerce customer service impersonations are among the top 10 telecom scams in China - accounting for nearly 88.4 per cent of cases.