The _Asian_ gang that kidnaps Asians. If we're going to make this racial then dont mess it up.

Agree, title should be worded “gangs in Asia kidnap and force crimes to be committed”

I also found it confusing, but I don't think the Economist was trying to "make it racial." I think they were trying (and not succeeding) to succinctly express this sentence, in TFA:

> The schemes are organised by ethnic-Chinese gangs, which sometimes collaborate with their local counterparts, says Jeremy Douglas of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The Economist's propaganda is usually much more subtle than this particular instance.

Despite their neutral style, it occasionally leaks out, as in this instance. More often, it leaks out in their podcast, where the tone of voice used conveys their bias.

What is their propoganda and bias , curious to know.

The usual sly British games with the English language.

I first noticed it when they were ranting (very politely, of course) about some Indian policy change. They never said "the Indian government;" it was always "Modi's nationalist party."

There was another example where their podcast was playing the sounds of various religions. For church bells, the speaker said "who'd want to live next to that," and for other demographics, he'd say "ah lovely."

Do you think this is propaganda? Perhaps it is just a bias of the writer or editor (speaker in case of podcast).

> The usual sly British games with the English language.

> I first noticed it when they were ranting (very politely, of course) about some Indian policy change. They never said "the Indian government;" it was always "Modi's nationalist party."

What sly British language? They do the same when talking about other countries - Liz Truss, Kwarteng and the Tories, Biden and the Democrats, Macron, etc. It's pinning political actions on the people and factions responsible instead of obscuring them behind a faceless "the government".

Ya, those people _are_ the government. They would love to be able to fob all their problems off on some faceless beaurocracy (like the UK government did with the EU for years), but the buck stops with them. We should be challenging our leaders' priorities and the outcomes of their decisions (and not just in democratic countries) .

It isn't just the economist that does that. My small European country loved to rail on Trump, so usually bad news were 'Trump's government did X' and good ones were 'America government did Y'. I then checked and BBC, CNN and others had the exact same bias when reporting.

(not following now as covid lockdown ended and I stopped reading/listening to the news so much, so not sure if it still applied with Biden)

Would be nice to open a HN thread and not see an Indian nationalist spout xenophobia about the British. Even if just for one day.

Missing your colonial days?

They have an obvious pro-business, neoliberal (economic) bias, and they've never hidden it. Calling it propaganda and implying it's some nefarious tricking is too much. It's in their freaking name what they are!

>Calling it propaganda and implying it's some nefarious tricking is too much.

But it is still propaganda.

"Chinese gang kidnapped people, forced them to commit cyberfraud" seems like a pretty obvious rephrase.

You made it “racial”. Until I saw this comment I thought it was a story local to some Asian communities.

The PRC gangs to be exact.

Ethnically Chinese could very well mean Taiwan too, the main ethnic group there is also Han, same as mainland China.

This seems to follow the standard practice of ascribing race to victims but not to criminals.

I mean, you're the one who made it racial. Asia is a location, and the English language demonym for people who live there is "Asian."

It is a very weird way to phrase that headline. I'd rather they specified the Chinese gangs that kidnap Cambodians/Burmese.

It's especially relevant (to me, anyway) because of the ongoing exploitation of Cambodia by Chinese interests who have Cambodian officials in their pockets because, well, money.

Sihanoukville is something a friend had highlighted to me previously - it's seen massive development - by Chinese developers for a market comprised of Chinese tourists and expats. So the development hasn't exactly poured money into the economy, unless you count the minimal wages paid to local labourers, or the bribes to officials.

And the development has seen locals being displaced by obliging Cambodian officials when they were seen as getting in the way of "progress", as well as the Cambodians displaced because they've been priced out of their own town.

Mind you, economic colonialism is nothing new, and the countries that a lot of HNers hail from, myself included, have done exactly the same in the past (and, being fair, are probably still doing so now to some extent), but I feel it highlights the risks of the "Belt and Road" strategy as much as the ports in Sri Lanka et al that are now owned by Chinese interests because of loan terms that couldn't be met.

Right now China is offering up lots of money for influence in the Pacific, and lots of "development" loans, and the eventual cost is going to be massive for the entire planet - a lot of those small Pacific nations have very large EEZs, and the ability to fish in an absolutely unsustainable manner in those EEZs is often what China asks for in return.

There's also been worrying suggestions of Chinese military bases as a form of quid for the quo. (I say worrying because of China's aggressive tendencies in Biển Đông/West Phillipine Sea/North Natuna Sea/South China Sea).

>weird way to phrase that headline

It's Economist / western MSM evading the fact that Taiwan also plays huge part in criminal syndicate human trafficking schemes for telco scams targetting PRC&TW (but particularly PRC) nationals. It's one of the few criminal issues with formal joint PRC/TW coordination. I remember a few years ago they arrested ~8,000 such telco scammers from around the world (ASEAN/Pacific Islands/African) and 60% were TWnese. Maybe "Ethnically" Chinese gangs, but that has it's own layer of insinuations/omissions.

As for rest of your analysis, that's just the cost of rapid development. Same story in Laos and Vietnam, and PRC herself during hayday. As for with resource exploitation and military cooperation. Countries with less $2000 and shit prospects has few options for growth, and TBH the fact that Cambodia's per capita GDP is than landlocked Laos is startling.

Cartoons used to make jokes about kidnapping Asian kids to use them as slaves for math. It's interesting to see it become real now.

It used to be that these gangs would kidnap wealthy people in ransom schemes, but that would be dangerous for both parties. If you kidnap the wrong person from a family with the right political connections, there’s a good chance that it’ll turn into a fatal mistake. However, when you kidnap helpless people instead then you’re not going to face the military hunting you down. Also if you fleece the rich instead of putting them in mortal danger, there’s also a chance that they might not report it due to embarrassment.

Going on a tangent, the title is horrible. It looks like click bait which doesn’t suit The Economist. They need to change it.

Aljeezira wrote this up at some length 58 days back:

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/8/11/meet-c...

and it flew under the radar here at the time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32423206

Wow, that article is way better.

Some more reporting and past discussion on the topic

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31949731

https://www.propublica.org/article/human-traffickers-force-v...

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/8/11/meet-c...

this is related to "230K Chinese “persuaded to return” from abroad to establish Extraterritoriality" [1] As I mentioned in my comment in this article, there has been a lot reporting, videos on Telegram. It is not only happening in south east Asia, Turkey, Dubai, and more.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33050320