On June 11, Indian security agencies apprehended two Chinese nationals Yung Hai Lung and Lo Lung, at the Nepal border in Bihar’s Sitamarhi while they were trying to flee India.
Their interrogation revealed they had spent 15 days at one of Mr. Xue’s clubs called Tiangsheng Rianjen (‘heaven on earth’) in Greater Noida. Bihar Police coordinated the information with the Uttar Pradesh counterparts.
When the police reached the apartment in a luxury housing society in Greater Noida, it was found that Chinese nationals were on the run. Police and internal intelligence agencies suspect the arrests could be linked to a larger syndicate of organized crime that may include espionage. Mr. Xue’s front-face business of stocking Chinese goods to cater to Chinese ex-pats is a ruse.
The police traced Mr. Xue to a five-star hotel in Gurgaon on June 13. He had destroyed his Chinese passport and from his apartment, police found photocopies of a Voter ID, Aadhar Card, and an Indian passport issued from Darjeeling in the name of Lekpa Sherpa.
Also, they recovered two imported BMWs and another luxury car from the club premises, with around 52 lakh deposited in a friend’s bank account in the past six months. Police recovered details of nine companies registered under different Chinese names from Mr. Xue’s possession.
The bogus companies were registered for businesses in e-waste, mobile spare parts, and earphone manufacturing. No company was found at the registered addresses when the police raided the locations in Ghaziabad, Panipat, and Noida.
CCP-driven Criminal Activities in SE Asia: Take a hold of the Unregularized Sector
Recently, Thai and Cambodian police rescued 68 Thai workers from Chinese scam gangs that were running call centers in Sihanoukville in western Cambodia, the capital Phnom Penh and Krong Bavet on the border with Vietnam.
The workers were tricked into running telephone scams under the guidance of Chinese nationals.
“The workers were lured through social media with promises of high-paying online sales jobs in Poipet, a Cambodian town on the border with Thailand. As soon as they arrived in Cambodia, their travel documents were seized and they were held and forced by racketeers to make scam calls in their own languages. Instead of online sales, workers were told to make unsolicited phone calls posing as customs officers, policemen or potential investors looking to secure a bank transfer,” according to a report in The Irrawaddy.
The workers were lured through social media with promises of high-paying online sales jobs in Poipet, a Cambodian town on the border with Thailand. As soon as they arrived in Cambodia, their travel documents were seized and they were held and forced by racketeers to make scam calls in their own languages. Instead of online sales, workers were told to make unsolicited phone calls posing as customs officers, policemen, or potential investors looking to secure a bank transfer.
India thankfully hasn’t allowed any Special Economic Zones for Chinese Communist enterprises. However, Pakistan and Sri Lanka both have. And such countries are susceptible to misuse them in this manner, even to target India.
There has been an increasing economic integration between China and Southeast Asia over the past decade, which has seen a sharp increase in Chinese rogue investment in the region. But such enterprises have an illegal dimension. The activities are taking place in territories and special economic zones that exist beyond the effective reach of the host country’s legal apparatus.
Malaysians, Filipinos, and Indonesians have also been lured to Cambodia by organized crime groups based in and around Sihanoukville, a city notorious for lawlessness, casinos, and Chinese criminal gangs.
Similar operations have been exposed in the past as well. In November 2021, Cambodian police rescued 99 Thai workers from a building in Phnom Penh where they were held and forced into illegal work by a Chinese gang.
Predatory Economic Practices: Undermining Global Norms and Values
The Chinese CCP-driven communist government employs tactics that seek to influence political space and public opinion to achieve policies that are more favorable to China.
At the same time, the Chinese government is seeking to become the world’s greatest superpower through predatory lending and business practices, systematic theft of intellectual property, and brazen cyber intrusions.
Chinese companies being investigated in India for tax evasion and dodgy finances were reportedly gathering the personal data of a large number of individuals, and the alleged real beneficiaries were senior members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Most Chinese companies trace their ownership to senior members of the Communist Party Chinese companies found easy access to personal data with the growth of the digital sector in India. Mobile games and apps were used to attract customers seeking “easy loans” but they ended up with a high-interest burden, sources tracking the sector reveal. As many as 40 non-banking financial companies with links to the Chinese face license cancellations. Some of them have closed their operations and fled India, like Shopee.
Hence it’s not surprising that more than a dozen Chinese loan apps targeting the low-income Indian have come under the scanner of Indian security agencies. Chinese companies are part of the largest illegal financial flows globally, which even SE Asia and Europe find difficult to track.
Raids on Chinese telecom companies reveal that they failed to comply with Indian law by hiding transactions with their associate companies. Certain Chinese firms in India have been charged with EXIM-related violations and GST-related manipulations.
Tax raids were conducted against ZTE Corp in 2021 following which the income tax department unearthed tax liability of hundreds of crores over the years, unaccounted money, and failure to deduct tax at source for several financial years.
Influencing Indian Sovereignty
Social media has also been misused for financial fraud by Chinese companies. China Radio International (CRI), in its Tamil broadcast, has been advocating a pro-China stance by depicting the economic slowdown in India and economic growth in China, criticizing the Indian Army in border areas and the official Chinese line of not recognizing the Union Territory of Ladakh.
In recent years, there has been an uptick in ownership/ funding from Chinese companies in social media and news apps.
Dailyhunt, an Indian content and news aggregator, has received funding worth $25 million from ByteDance, which also owns the banned TikTok social networking service.
They have been frequently indulging in propagating Anti-India and anti-Indian Defense forces content.
Pocket FM has also received investments worth $20-25 million from Tencent Holdings. Tencent is already an investor in Pocket FM to the tune of $12-15 million. Similarly, they have been found to be promoting Chinese culture: a pet project of the CCP communist party of China.
Similar cases are Xioami (Share Chat, Samosa labs, touch talent), and Shunwei (share chat, meesho, regional language podcast app Kuku FM). These apps are used for Chinese propaganda activities, and to spread an anti-India narrative, or exploit sensitive issues such as religion, region, language to create, and or fuel unrest, claimed one of the above-mentioned sources.
Recently India banned over fifty Chinese apps including Beauty Camera: Sweet Selfie HD, Beauty Camera, Equalizer & Bass Booster, CamCard for SalesForce Ent, Isoland 2: Ashes of Time Lite, Viva Video Editor, Tencent Driver, Onmyoji Chess, Onmyoji Arena, AppLock, Dual Space Lite.
Al these can be information-gathering tools for the Chinese communists.
While common rural Chinese has hardships, their land and water resources destroyed by the corrupt Chinese Communist’s policies, the CCP communist Elites continue to prosper in China.
Poverty in China
Are we Indians clandestinely being fed Chinese cultural and regional agenda? The grandeur of Chinese history has been debunked many times. However, the assault by Communist CCP is on all walks of one’s Indian heritage. They give nice applications while clandestinely one accepts Arunachal not being shown as Indian territory, or Ladakh as Chinese territory.
It’s time to look around us, even in our digital world. Who is trying to divide Indians and superimpose superiority of Chinese communists’ validity? Mostly you will find the owner of that app, platform and company tracing its roots in a Chinese communist CCP party’s functionary.
While common rural Chinese has hardships, their land and water resources destroyed by the corrupt Chinese Communist’s policies, the CCP communist Elites continue to prosper in China.]
