Chinese students have, for a number of years, increasingly sought opportunities to study at top universities across the world. In many educational institutions in Australia, Canada, the US and the UK, among others, Chinese nationals comprise the majority of foreign students. Increasing material wealth in China in recent years means that many of these students are the children of well-off businesspeople and government officials and, as a result are able to access educational institutions overseas. However, higher levels of relative wealth among Chinese students also make them attractive targets in the eyes of various malicious actors, including local and transnational criminal gangs engaged in kidnappings for ransom. 

Traditional kidnappings

Several recent incidents of traditional kidnappings of Chinese students have been reported at universities in foreign countries. Traditional kidnappings are perpetrated by both local and transnational criminal groups. 

Some of the most prominent incidents have involved violence. For example, in August 2019, kidnappers abducted and tortured a Chinese national studying in Sydney, Australia. The suspects sent videos of the abuse to the victim’s parents in order to coerce them into paying an 80 bitcoin (USD 790,880) ransom. While it is unclear if this was paid, police found the victim alive in the Mooney Mooney area of New South Wales several days later. In another high-profile incident in March 2019, kidnappers attacked a Chinese student with a stun gun in the carpark of his luxury apartment building in Ontario, Canada. They used the stun gun to torture the victim in footage sent to his parents in an attempt to coerce an unspecified ransom payment. Again, it is unclear if this was paid. However, police found the victim in a town located approximately 200 km from the site of the abduction and have since arrested four suspects in connection with the kidnapping, all members of a local gang. 

Virtual kidnappings

Virtual kidnappings have increasingly targeted Chinese students abroad. Unlike traditional kidnappings, which can be carried out by local criminal groups, most virtual kidnappings targeting Chinese students are perpetrated by Chinese or Taiwanese gangs because they, like their victims, speak Mandarin or other Chinese dialects. The perpetrators usually demand small ransom amounts, typically several thousand USD. 

Organised crime groups perpetrating these scams are highly mobile operate across various jurisdictions. Crime syndicates ran virtual kidnapping scams initially out of Taiwan in the 1990s, but to evade authorities, have since moved their operations to Eastern Europe, Africa, several southeast Asian countries, and Australia. In most virtual kidnapping cases involving Chinese students, perpetrators pose as Chinese law enforcement officers in order to convince the targeted student to hand over personal information, such as social media login details. Perpetrators will then use this information when contacting the students’ families. Over the past two years, there has been a spike in such cases targeting Chinese students studying at foreign universities. They reportedly target university students because they can take advantage of Chinese parents’ concerns about their children’s safety abroad and their unfamiliarity in dealing with foreign law enforcement bodies, in order to quickly coerce ransom payments. 

Virtual kidnapping cases involving Chinese students have been reported in multiple countries. In Australia alone, over 900 cases were reported to ScamWatch, a website run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, in 2019. Australian authorities estimate that virtual kidnapping gangs made approximately AUD 1.5 million (USD 1 million) in incidents targeting Chinese students this year, a slight increase from 2018.