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From classroom to crime ring, Lao’s next generation are graduating from CCP-run Confucius Institutes to Golden Triangle telecom-fraud operations.
Employees of the Kings Romans Chinese-owned casino riding bicycles past the entry gate to the Chinatown quarter in Ton Pheung, a special economic zone set in northwestern Laos along the Mekong river, at the border with Thailand and Burma on April 9, 2015. Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images
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Laos—a landlocked country wedged between China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma—is suffering an exodus of human capital, as organized crime fueled by Chinese money lures graduates away with paychecks that dwarf local wages.
Students who master the Mandarin language at the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) soft-power project, the Confucius Institute, hosted by the National University of Laos (NUOL), are sliding straight into jobs at Chinese-run telecom-fraud centers, says Liu Ao, a Chinese national who spent two years at the campus’s international development graduate program.
