August 15, 2025: Myanmar, a nation of 56 million people located in Southeast Asia between Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand, has got lots of problems. For starters it’s the poorest nation in the region with a per-capita income of $1,477. This is saying something because its landlocked eastern neighbor Laos has a per-capita income of $2,170. Poverty is the least of Myanmar’s problems. First there is the civil war, which began in 2021 after a period of armed unrest in the countryside.

Myanmar's long-running insurgencies escalated significantly in response to the 2021 government takeover by army generals. This was followed by the subsequent brutal suppression of citizens protesting the military government. The exiled National Unity Government/NUG and several tribal militias repudiated the 2008 constitution and demanded a democracy based on federal states. Besides engaging this alliance, the ruling government of the State Administration Council/SAC, also contends with other anti-SAC forces in areas under its control. The armed rebels are spread throughout the country in hundreds of armed groups scattered across the nation.

It gets worse, for Myanmar’s lawless regions are refuges for Chinese gangs carrying out internet-based financial scams. Several well-connected organized criminal groups operate these scam centers across Southeast Asia, mainly in the poorer states like Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. Their scams usually consist of encouraging unsuspecting victims around the world to hand over their financial savings. Many of the organized crime groups came to these countries after Beijing began an anticorruption crackdown on illegal cross-border gambling and money laundering in Macau, a special administrative region of China located on its southern coast. While casinos are illegal in mainland China, the ones just across the border from China, as well as in Macau, have long served as sources of profit, tools for money laundering, and bases of other illegal activities for organized crime groups.

The scam centers are staffed by thousands of people, many of whom the criminal groups deceived into coming to Myanmar where they are illegally forced to work in inhumane and abusive conditions. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that more than two hundred thousand people have been trafficked into Myanmar and Cambodia to execute these online scams. The trafficking networks reportedly stretch far beyond the region, pulling in victims from countries including Brazil, Kenya, and the Netherlands.

Since many of the scam victims are from China, the Chinese government's role in Myanmar’s civil war and its relationship with the military government is questioned at home. China has generally supported Myanmar’s military government. The rise in Southeast Asian scam centers has altered China’s role in Myanmar’s civil war and its relationship with the military government, as many of the cyber scams and trafficking victims are Chinese citizens. Beijing has generally supported Myanmar’s junta to safeguard its Belt and Road infrastructure projects in the country and to prevent fighting or displacement from spilling into China’s Yunnan province. But the junta’s inability to crack down on scam centers, as well as the growing victimization of Chinese citizens, has changed China’s calculus.

In late October 2023, three ethnic insurgent groups successfully coordinated an attack on the Myanmar military in northeastern Shan State. In their justification for launching the offensive, the ethnic armed groups claimed they would eliminate scam centers along the China-Myanmar border, accusing the junta of tolerating and profiting from the industry. Experts say China offered tacit approval for the attack, suggesting Beijing is willing to allow temporary instability on its border if it stops the human trafficking and scamming of its citizens. Chinese law enforcement is pressuring local ethnic militias to hand over Chinese nationals and close the scam centers. Since the counteroffensive, China has repatriated more than forty thousand citizens, according to state-backed media.

The rise in Southeast Asian scam centers has altered China’s role in Myanmar’s civil war and its relationship with the military government, as many of the cyber scams and trafficking victims are Chinese citizens. Beijing has generally supported Myanmar’s junta to safeguard its Belt and Road infrastructure projects in the country and to prevent fighting or displacement from spilling into China’s Yunnan province. But the junta’s inability to crack down on scam centers, as well as the growing victimization of Chinese citizens, has changed China’s calculus.

As China continues with its crackdown by repatriating scam gang leaders, kingpins and human trafficking victims, some criminal syndicates have shifted their enterprises to Myanmar’s eastern region of Karen State bordering Thailand. Thailand has accepted the military junta under previous governments, and crime syndicates have relied on access to electricity and telecommunications in Thailand to operate. However, some experts suggest that current Thai Prime Minister Sretta Thavisin has concentrated on the national security challenge that Myanmar’s scam centers pose to Thailand. In March 2024, Thailand assisted in a joint operation to repatriate almost one thousand citizens to China from Myanmar.

The United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom issued coordinated sanctions in December 2023 on individuals and entities involved with the scams, which followed previous sanctions issued shortly after the 2021 coup to cut off other revenue streams for the Myanmar military, such as the oil and gas industry. Meanwhile, American authorities have taken action in some individual cases by seizing assets of those profiting from crypto scams. In one case, the American Department of Justice seized $9 million worth of crypto, disrupting the financial infrastructure of the scam network. Thus 0ne of the group of six Malaysian men rescued from a human trafficking syndicate in Myanmar was given a hug upon arrival at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang on December 21, 2022.

In 2023, the U.S. Department of State released its latest Trafficking in Persons report, and its Burma/Myanmar chapter documented cyber scam abuses in the country. Its findings serve as evidence for the United States to withhold non-humanitarian foreign aid from countries that are complicit in human trafficking—a tactic that the United States already implemented in Myanmar but no other neighboring countries complicit in human trafficking, such as Cambodia. Experts argue that cutting back U.S. assistance is one way Washington can address continued human trafficking.

What should policymakers expect next? The future of scam operations in Myanmar is uncertain, particularly given the transnational nature of the problem and the uncertainty of the country’s civil war. Experts warn that these criminal enterprises are highly mobile and can easily elude a crackdown by dispersing their operations across borders. Unfortunately, the law enforcement responses have been very much contained within national boundaries, says Americans Jason Tower, country director for Myanmar at the United States Institute of Peace.

Some experts say that as China continues its efforts to protect its own citizens from being scammed, the operations will likely seek even more victims in the West. America will need to ramp up its international collaboration, including raising this issue with China. There will also need to be a new policy approach to fentanyl. This is necessary to effectively protect American citizens from these scams in the near future.