Thousands of Chinese lured abroad and forced to be scammers – now Beijing is cracking down

“Should I feel anything?” asks the beady-eyed man, sitting in a padded cell with handcuffs around his wrists.

He’s being grilled by Chinese investigators about the time he allegedly ordered a stranger to be killed – a human offering to celebrate his sworn brotherhood with a business partner.

“Wasn’t he a living, breathing person?” an investigator asks.

“I didn’t feel much,” the man maintains.

The scene may sound like it came straight out of a crime drama. In fact, it is part of a documentary on Chinese state media – a look inside the workings of the justice system almost unheard of in a country where court proceedings are largely kept out of the public eye.

The handcuffed man answering questions is Chen Dawei, a member of the infamous Wei family, one of several powerful mafia groups that for years operated with impunity in Myanmar’s border town of Laukkaing.

His confession forms just one part of a months-long propaganda push by Chinese officials. It both warns Chinese people of South East Asia’s billion-dollar scam industry, and highlights the Chinese government’s crackdown on the men behind an industry which has trapped thousands, and stolen billions.

The message China wants to send, as one investigator puts it, is clear: “It’s to warn other people, no matter who you are, where you are, as long as you commit such heinous crimes against Chinese people, you will pay the price.”

Or, to use a Chinese idiom: kill the chicken to scare the monkey.