The callers are independently operating criminals; they are not actually representing the Chinese government.
But the persons picking up the phone don’t know this. And when someone who sounds just like one of the thugs who works for the government tells you to kidnap yourself and extract a ransom from your family, the feeling is that you had better do it (“Self-kidnappings by Chinese Students Abroad: Mystery Solved,” The Diplomat, April 8, 2024).
One of the most baffling news items in recent years has been the cases of Chinese students abroad who effectively kidnap themselves for ransom. They leave home, even tie themselves up with ropes, all on the orders of Chinese cyber-criminals—who are not even there with them….
Occasionally, the criminals mix in threats of pending arrest, or extradition back to China, as would-be punishment for alleged fraud or other crime said to have been committed by the students or their families. Invariably, the victims are told to cut off all contact with their family and the outside world, and to perform [as if physically kidnapped] for the camera. Sometimes this is framed as necessary to help the consulate or the police with their “investigations.” There is no logic—except that of perceived power.
During the last few years, a long series of incidents along these lines have involved Chinese students in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the United States—all destinations where Chinese parents with a lot of money send their children to study.
In the West, most of us would regard complying with a phoned-in demand to kidnap oneself as unfathomable barring very unusual circumstances. But Diplomat author Magnus Fiskesjö doesn’t see much of a riddle. In the case of Chinese nationals, the very unusual circumstances that make the cooperation intelligible afflict everyone in their country.
A rational fear
Chinese students who fall prey to the scam “have a rational fear of their own country’s authorities, which cannot easily be distinguished from professional criminals. The Chinese authorities, their consulates, and their police have earned this reputation and continue to build it though a regime of fear and intimidation. They are not government authorities or police that are responsible to their own people; in fact, they only report to the Communist Party and its bosses….
“Almost everyone in China assumes that the police and authorities are corrupt,” as exemplified by the “never-ending series of forced confessions” and the fact that “police torture is endemic in China.” Fiskesjö also mentions transnational repression and the “ongoing genocide in Xinjiang.”
Knowing that “Chinese authorities face no accountability” for their crimes, the Chinese people recognize that the “grim reality is that it might very well happen that Chinese police suddenly decide to harass you, regardless of whether you are in Australia or in the United States, and regardless of whether you’ve done anything wrong.”
As in the case of other high-pressure scams, the victims of the phoned-in kidnappings would probably realize that something is off if they could only pause to calmly consider the aspects of what’s happening which make no sense. But they are bullied into terror and compliance by the fact that the caller’s viciousness and arbitrariness are just what they’d expect from a Chinese government official.
