Thailand pulls the plug on cross-border scams – Asian Media Report

Thailand has cut off power, fuel supplies and Internet services to five areas in neighbouring Myanmar that harbour large-scale call centre scams and online gambling operations. The illegal enterprises are maintained through human trafficking.

The Thai Government’s action ended a long period of debate and foot-dragging over approaches to combatting the scam operations.

Chinese Premier Xi Jinping met Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra in Beijing on Thursday and thanked Thailand for the strong measures it had taken, Bangkok Post reported. Most of the scams’ victims are Chinese.

“The two sides must continue to strengthen co-operation in security, law enforcement and judicial co-operation,” Xi said.

As the two were meeting, 61 people rescued from scam centres in Myanmar were being taken to Thailand, the paper said. Thirty-four of them were Chinese, with the others coming from Indonesia and African countries.

Thailand pulled the plug on five scam operations clustered in three Myanmar towns, the paper said – Myawaddy, opposite Mae Sot in Thailand’s Tak province; Payathonzu, opposite Three Pagoda Pass in Kanchanaburi province; and Tachilek, opposite Mae Sai district in Chiang Rai province.

Thai PBS World, an online news service, said Paetongtarn ordered an end to the Government foot-dragging on the issue (shortly before her planned meeting with Xi).

A commentary in The Diplomat, the Asian online newsmagazine, said the State of Southeast Asia 2024 Survey Report found almost 60 per cent of Thais thought the call-centre scams were the top concern facing their Government.

The article said Thailand had been accused of facilitating the scam epidemic, either through corrupt officials accepting bribes to allow human trafficking from Thai soil or on a larger scale, through the sale of electricity to Myanmar.

Supporters of the sale stressed the role of Thai electricity powering medical clinics in Myanmar; critics argued that it helped sustain the criminal scams. Both arguments appeared to rest on the belief that Thailand had massive leverage over the scam gangs.

“It remains highly doubtful whether [Thai] pressure can overcome the deep entrenchment of illicit networks and their connections to local, influential warlords,” the article said.

Brutal war military junta cannot win

The world’s most deadly war at present is Ukraine. Next is Palestine. The third is the civil war in Myanmar.

More than 73,000 people have been killed in this conflict, with almost 20,000 deaths added in 2024.

Of the dead, at least 6,000 were civilians. Countless more have been wounded, says an article in The Diplomat, the Asian online newsmagazine. A further 3.5 million people are internally displaced.

The story, written to mark four years since the military junta’s coup – and thus four years of civil war – says the UN estimates about 20 million people will need help this year. 

But donor fatigue has set in, the story says. Last year, the UN received only 34 per cent of the $US 1 billion it needed.

Since the coup that ousted the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, about 20 ethnic armed organisations allied with units of the People’s Defence Force have fought a brutal war. They have made it clear this is a fight the junta force cannot win.

The article says: “Anti-regime forces [hold] the upper hand on battlefields across the country amid growing hopes that the junta led by Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing will buckle and be defeated, perhaps by the end of the year.”

An opinion piece in The Jakarta Post praises the Myanmar people for their extraordinary courage and determination in their fight for freedom. 

“The people of Myanmar have faced unrelenting atrocities,” the article says. “Airstrikes that terrorise communities, arbitrary arrests silencing dissent, mass displacement and a crumbling economy.”

The author, Yuyun Wahyuningrum, leader of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, says ASEAN must deal with armed resistance and civil society groups in trying to work out a path to peace.

“Any peace process that engages solely with the junta while excluding key stakeholders… is destined to fail,” she says. “The voices of Myanmar’s citizens must be at the centre.”

West shuns China, misses the big tech changes

Confirmation bias and related cognitive dissonance underly the West’s anxiety over China’s DeepSeek AI breakthrough – in the view of Bert George, an economist and international relations professor at City University of Hong Kong.

“Confirmation bias means you only take in information that supports your current image about something,” he said in a South China Morning Post opinion piece. “There is plenty of such information in relation to China… often unilaterally focused on what is going wrong in the country.

“Cognitive dissonance relates to a state of anxiety that may pop up when information somehow does slip through that maybe your mental image was not correct.

“We are seeing some large-scale cognitive dissonance manifest in the West as a result of the recent launch of DeepSeek – China’s response to ChatGPT.”

George said the strong stock market response to DeepSeek was a classic example of cognitive dissonance – shock, disbelief and discomfort.

He said the West needed more China experts – people who speak Chinese, visit the country often and understand it.

“They can act as a bridge,” he said.

Andrew Sheng, distinguished fellow at Hong Kong University’s Asia Global Institute, noted the announcement of DeepSeek’s AI breakthrough came near the start of the Year of the Snake.

The looming volatility flowing from Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders, natural disasters and technology game-changers like DeepSeek made him think of the old board game Snakes and Ladders, Sheng said in an article published in The Jakarta Post and South China Morning Post.

How could people decide who and what is up and down in this snaky, slippery year? Sheng asked.

“The best analysis I have heard is from Hong Kong-based economist Louis-Vincent Gave,” he said. Gave argues that “the mainstream media has overlooked the fact that the Chinese economy has leapfrogged the West in engineering and, increasingly, technology”.

“After eight visits to the mainland last year, I arrived at the same conclusion. Most of us have overlooked the qualitative change in the mainland economy because few outside ‘experts’ have visited the factories and looked at what is really going on.”

Chinese war drones spread their wings

China has surprised the world with its progress in AI – and it might also be gaining an edge in military technology.

Two stories in the South China Morning Post point to advances in attack drones and unmanned boats and in drones that can be launched by a submerged submarine, fly through the air and return to the sub. 

Both stories were written by Stephen Chen, the paper’s science news editor.

One story reports on a simulated battle in the western Pacific  between a PLA Navy Type 055 destroyer, accompanied by two unmanned mother ships, and a US fleet of eight Arleigh-Burke class destroyers. 

The Chinese mother ships were commanded to move forward and released 32 drones and 14 unmanned boats. The US fleet launched 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles and long-range anti-ship stealth missiles, all aimed at the Chinese destroyer.

The unmanned Chinese platforms combined with the destroyer to fend off the US attack. The destroyer remained unscathed. 

Chen quotes a paper written by Chinese scientists as saying drones and unmanned boats would give the PLA a highly efficient and low-cost “kill web”.

In the second story, Chen says the US is reportedly considering a plan to deploy a submarine near the Chinese coast to release a large number of drones from under the water. The drones would mount a swarm attack on any PLA fleet trying to land in Taiwan.

But China has already turned this dream into reality, he says. 

“Test flights suggest its drones could accomplish much more than the Pentagon has envisioned for its own,” he writes.

“Researchers… have developed the world’s first drone that can be launched by a submarine from the water, loop repeatedly between the sea and the sky and eventually find its way back to the sub.”

The drone has been named Feiyi, Chen says. Fei means “fly” and yi describes a waterbird spreading its wings as it takes off.

No qualms: US will flout international order

America’s allies will have to adapt to survive in a world where the US will have no qualms about violating the international rules-based order.

This is the view of American academic Mason Richey, writing as a guest columnist in The Korea Times. Richey, president of the Korea International Studies Association, says no one should be surprised that the very notions of the rule of law and the constitutional separation of powers are under assault from President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Trump promised to be a ‘dictator’ on Day 1,” he says. “Whether he succeeds at his authoritarian takeover is still uncertain but the US has finally crossed the Rubicon it began fording on Jan. 6, 2021. 

“The political character of the US is now fundamentally changed. US allies and partners should recognise this dynamic, as… US foreign policy is greatly determined by its domestic political foundation.”

Trump has launched a blitzkrieg covering a wide range of activities under the headings of improper tariffs imposition, legally dubious executive orders, wrongful personnel decisions and flat-out constitutional violations, Richey says.

“Washington is no longer a values partner,” he says. “The sooner allies – such as Korea – understand this and calculate accordingly, the sooner they can adapt to surviving in a new world of predation.”

However, international commentator Andrew Leung takes a more benign view. Leung, a former senior Hong Kong Government official, says Trump’s rule-of-the-jungle iconoclasm could provide momentum towards a more peaceful and co-operative multipolar world.

“Trump could cherish a legacy of a peaceful presidency,” Leung writes in a South China Morning Post column.

He had claimed he would end the Ukraine war  and potentially mend ties with Russia. He might also strike nuclear deals with Iran and North Korea.

“China is in a good position to help with all these possible initiatives,” Leung says. “Perhaps that’s why Trump has said he and President Xi Jinping can solve many of the world’s problems and why he wants to visit Beijing within his first 100 days.”

Phnom Penh blacklists environment reporter

Cambodia’s media is one of the most restricted in the world.  The country ranks 151 out of 180 nations on the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.

Its woefully low standing has been confirmed with the expulsion last month of British environmental journalist Gerald Flynn. He was blocked from entering Cambodia when returning from a holiday in Thailand and forced onto a flight back to Bangkok.

Ucanews.com, the Catholic Asian news site, reported this week that Flynn was told his name had been added to a blacklist.

Flynn, president of the Overseas Press Club of Cambodia, had worked in Cambodia for five years, writing for Mongabay.com, an international environmental website. It said Flynn’s ban seemed to be in retaliation for his journalistic work, including his involvement in a France24 documentary covering Cambodia’s carbon-offset efforts.

Ucan said Cambodian authorities would not comment on the ban nor on the existence of the blacklist.

The story also said that Chhoeung Chheng, a Cambodian journalist who reported on illegal logging for Kampuchea Aphivath, an online publication, was shot on December 4 and died of his wounds two days later.

Local journalist Mech Dara was arrested in September and was released only after appearing in a video apologising to former leader Hun Sen and current Prime Minister Hun Manet for publishing false information.

Ucan quoted a statement by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand: “Journalism in Cambodia is a dangerous and thankless profession.”

David Armstrong has worked in Asia for more than 20 years. He is a former chief editor of The Bulletin, the Canberra Times, The Australian and the South China Morning Post. He is a former president of the Bangkok Post company and lives in Bangkok. 

This article first appeared in Pearls and Irritations.