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Jess Ma

Willa Wu

Sun Maoxing and wife Wang Weiju, both in their sixties, never expected their first trip outside China to involve a desperate search for their missing son.
The couple from mainland China’s Shandong province on Monday stood outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, pleading for help from anyone they could see leaving the site.
Each of the parents told embassy staff to “please save my son”.
“The last time I saw my son was April last year, when my mother died … I did not have a chance to talk to him much then,” Sun, 64, said.
His 60-year-old wife, Wang, was equally distraught. “He is our only son. We cannot live without him,” she said outside the embassy.
The exact location of their 32-year-old son Sun Baochao is currently unknown, with WeChat messages asking his parents for money their only recent communication. In a message last week he revealed he was in Thailand.
The Suns’ story is just one of many human trafficking cases reported recently, in which criminals lure victims into working in notorious industrial-scale scam parks in neighbouring Myanmar.
The efforts of mainlanders to track down their loved ones have prompted a Hong Kong advocate to ask families from the city who also have relatives trapped in Southeast Asian countries whether they want to take similar action and fly to Bangkok to plead their cases to Thai and Chinese authorities.

Former Yau Tsim Mong district council vice-chairman Andy Yu Tak-po has been helping some families of victims since 2022, twice providing assistance for them to submit petitions to Hong Kong authorities.
Outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok on Monday, Wang told the Post that the couple’s son had worked for a delivery company in Shenzhen for three years after relocating from Tibet, where he had been employed in a similar job.
She said the only communication she had with her son since he asked for money last week were two further requests for funds.
Wang had also received three calls from her son’s WeChat account, but she said the person on the other end was a woman speaking in broken Mandarin.
Thai police told the elderly couple last Saturday that their son had taken a taxi from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport on January 1, but they could not trace his whereabouts after that point.
The couple were then asked to mail documents for their case to a designated postbox of the Chinese embassy. They have not received any updates since.


“[The embassy staff member] said he will contact me when there are updates, but currently they know nothing about what happened,” Sun said after a meeting at the Chinese embassy on Monday afternoon.
Another mainland Chinese resident at the embassy, 40-year-old Wang Yaxin from Harbin, said he was looking for his cousin, who had gone missing since his last communication from the Thai province of Tak, bordering Myanmar.
Wang said he suspected his 28-year-old cousin, who was jobless, had fallen prey to a loan scam in Thailand.
Wang added that the young man told him he was travelling to take out a loan of around 1 million yuan (US$136,372) in Bangkok before he reported his location outside the Thai capital.
“I told him to share his location with me. I screen-grabbed his location, but once I left the chat window to make a phone call, he disappeared,” Wang said.
Human trafficking in Southeast Asia has come under the spotlight again after Chinese actor Wang Xing was rescued from a scam centre along the Thai-Myanmar border last Friday.
The actor had gone missing for a week as he fell prey to a sham production invitation. His captors shaved his head and forced him to practise typing for days at a scam compound in Myanmar.
On Monday, Hong Kong security minister Chris Tang Ping-keung stressed that none of the victims his bureau was trying to locate in scam parks had been abducted. Rather, they were lured to Thailand with the promise of securing high-paying jobs.
Sixteen of the 28 cases his bureau had been alerted to had ended with the victim returning to Hong Kong, Tang said. The rest could be contacted and said they were safe, although they had “lost personal freedom”.


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‘Please save my son’: Chinese families’ desperate appeals over Thai job scams

Sun Maoxing (left) and wife Wang Weiju show a photo of their son, who is currently missing. Photo: Sam Tsang

Wang Weiju pleads with Chinese embassy staff in Bangkok. Photo: Sam Tsang

Hong Kong task force receives ‘eager response’ from Thailand over detainees

Undersecretary for Security Michael Cheuk says the group has had “good communications on the latest situation and intelligence”. Photo: Sam Tsang

Undersecretary for Security Michael Cheuk (second left) meets Thai justice minister Tawee Sodsong (second right) and other officials. Photo: Handout

Can Hong Kong task force in Thailand help prevent more ‘high-paying’ job scams?

The task force, led by Undersecretary for Security Michael Cheuk, left for Bangkok on Sunday night. Photo: Elson Li

Undersecretary for Security Michael Cheuk and other members of the task force checking in for their flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok. Photo: Elson Li

News

Hong Kong

Law and Crime

Hong Kong advocate also asking families from city if they want to go to Thailand to search for loved ones, following lead of mainlanders


Hong Kong advocate also asking families from city if they want to go to Thailand to search for loved ones, following lead of mainlanders.
