China's War on the Scam Empires of South East Asia

The Tremendous Scale of Human Trafficking

De: Richard Murch

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

KILL THE CHICKEN TO SCARE THE MONKEY

The Chinese proverb shā jī jǐng hóu—kill the chicken to scare the monkey—captures something essential about power and punishment. You don't need to destroy everyone. You need only make an example of one to terrify the rest into submission.

On a sweltering evening in August 2023, Chen Dawei appeared on Chinese state television. His face was pale, his voice hollow. Flanked by stern officials, he confessed to crimes that had destroyed thousands of lives. But Chen was not the architect of these crimes—he was merely a cog in a vast machine, a chicken selected for slaughter while the monkeys watched from the trees.

This book tells the story of the world's most sophisticated transnational fraud network, an empire built in the shadows between China and Myanmar, where scam operations flourished under the protection of warlords, corrupt officials, and criminal dynasties.

It is a story of how technology, desperation, and impunity combined to create an industry of deception that spans continents and costs victims billions.