Scam Inc 4: The Al Capone of China

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• 00:04

  The Economist Previously on Scam Inc. The compound can be owned by some tycoon somewhere who is not even in Myanmar or not even in Thailand.

• 00:16

  The place was run by Chinese.

• 00:20

  The bosses were Chinese.

• 00:23

  And then, I don't know if it is what he said,

• 00:26

  or it's just a translator who added it, but then he said, this is World War 3.

• 00:37

  So this might sound a bit insensitive, but I like pig butchering.

• 00:41

  I mean, I don't like pig butchering scams.

• 00:44

  I just like the name for them.

• 00:46

  Pig butchering.

• 00:48

  It sounds violent, visceral, and so contemptuous.

• 00:52

  In that sense, I think it perfectly suits the scheme it's meant to describe.

• 00:57

  This is no euphemism.

• 00:59

  It's a brutal phrase for a brutal crime.

• 01:03

  I remember when I first heard the term, Not in English, but in Chinese.

• 01:08

  It was 2020.

• 01:10

  I'd just been hired by the Economist to cover China.

• 01:13

  I'd lived and worked there before, and I was looking forward to going back.

• 01:17

  But while I waited in Hong Kong for my China visa to come through,

• 01:21

  COVID spread around the world.

• 01:23

  China makes it hard for foreign journalists to get visas in the best of times.

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