Strike telecom fraud at the root

The third draft of the Law Against Telecom Fraud was submitted to the National People's Congress Standing Committee, the country's top legislature, for review on Tuesday.

The necessity for this law cannot be overemphasized given that in 2020 alone, there were 927,000 telecom fraud cases, accounting for 40 percent of all criminal cases in China. The crime is so prevalent that almost everyone in China has at some point received a text message telling them they are under criminal investigation and must send some money as a guarantee to a private account.

In some cases, the frauds lure men into intimate video chats and then blackmail them by threatening to upload a recording of the video chat.