China rolls out ‘zero tolerance’ crackdown on fake government officials, financial crimes

In an effort to maintain a “good business environment”, the ministry said, law enforcement agencies should leverage mechanisms like big data to uncover illegal fundraising, contract fraud, and illegal deposits.

According to a November report by state news agency Xinhua, more than 20 central ministries and agencies, including the ministries of finance, agriculture and rural affairs, and science and technology, as well as state-owned enterprises, had issued “fraud prevention statements” warning the public to be aware of impostors.

In one case from a court in the city of Dezhou in the eastern province of Shandong, a gang had defrauded 286 victims of almost 29 million yuan (US$4 million) by claiming to have “government backing”, according to the Xinhua report.

The scam forced the NDRC to issue a statement on its official WeChat account saying that it had no such working group and there were no such government subsidies.

Chinese authorities have also been battling frauds in which scammers use artificial intelligence to commit financial crimes with increasingly sophisticated technology.

The frequent media presence of some high-profile government officials had offered scammers abundant content to create realistic simulations for scams using facial and voice recognition, CCTV reported.

Earlier this year, Beijing vowed to ramp up a crackdown on financial crimes and pledged to improve monitoring of transactions to reduce risks.