China executes four more Myanmar mafia members

BBC

China has executed four members of the Bai family mafia, one of the notorious dynasties that ran scam centres in Myanmar, state media report.

They were among 21 of the family's members and associates who were convicted of fraud, homicide, injury and other crimes by a court in Guangdong province.

Last November, the court sentenced five of them to death, including the clan's patriarch Bai Suocheng, who died of illness after his conviction, state media reported.

Last week, China executed 11 members of the Ming family mafia as part of its crackdown on scam operations in South East Asia that have entrapped thousands of Chinese victims.

For years, the Bais, Mings and several other families dominated Myanmar's border town of Laukkaing, where they ran casinos, red-light districts and cyberscam operations.

Among the clans, the Bais were "number one", Bai Suocheng's son previously told state media after he was detained.

The Bais, who controlled their own militia, established 41 compounds to house cyberscam activities and casinos, authorities said. Within the walls of those compounds was a culture of violence, where beatings and torture were routine.

The Bai family's criminal activities led to the deaths of six Chinese citizens, the suicide of one person and multiple injuries, the court said.

Military government

The Bais rose to power in Laukkaing in the early 2000s after the town's then-warlord was ousted in a military operation led by Min Aung Hlaing, who now leads Myanmar's military government.

The military leader had been looking for cooperative allies, and Bai Suocheng - then a deputy of the warlord - fitted the bill.

But the families' empires crashed in 2023, when Beijing became frustrated by the Myanmar military's inaction on the scam operations and tacitly backed an offensive by ethnic insurgents in the area, which marked a turning point in Myanmar's civil war.

That led to the capture of the scam mafia, and their members were handed over to Beijing.

In China, they became subjects of state documentaries which emphasised the Chinese authorities' resolve to eradicate the scam networks.

With these recent executions, Beijing appears to be sending a deterrence message to would-be scammers.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to run online scams in Myanmar and elsewhere in South East Asia, according to estimates by the United Nations.

Among them are thousands of Chinese people, and their victims, from whom they swindle billions of dollars, are mainly Chinese as well.