一 | BANGKOK -- Zhang Hongliang, a former restaurant manager in central China, took various gigs in and outside China to support his family after losing his job during the COVID-19 pandemic.In March, a job offer to teach Chinese cooking at a restaurant led him into a cyber scam compound in Myanmar, where he was instead ordered to lure Chinese into giving up their savings for fake investment schemes via social media platforms.Zhang is one of tens of thousands of people, mostly but not all Chinese, who have become ensnared in cyber scam networks run by powerful Chinese criminal syndicates in Southeast Asia. Regional and Chinese authorities have netted thousands of people in a crackdown, but experts say they are failing to root out the local elites and criminal networks that are bound to keep running the schemes.When scam operations are shut down in one place they often just resurface elsewhere. The problem is an embarrassment for Beijing and is discouraging ordinary Chinese from traveling to Southeast Asia out of fear they might be duped or kidnapped and caught up in a cyber scam operation. In recent years, media reports have uncovered instances of young people being lured to places in Cambodia or Myanmar for high-paying jobs, only to be forced to work as scammers. Rescue organizations say people are regularly beaten or face physical punishments such as being forced to run laps if they don't perform well. In August, China, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar agreed to set up a joint police operations center to tackle cyber scams in the region. On Oct. 10, China’s Ministry of Public Security announced that its “Summer Operation” had successfully brought back 2,317 scam suspects from northern Myanmar to China.China calls such people suspects, though experts say most of them are victims who were forced to work for the criminals. They question how they will be treated once back in China. The schemes based in countries like Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are run by Chinese bosses hand-in-hand with local elites. Many are based in places where China has financed big construction projects through leader Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative.Myanmar's border regions long have been a magnet for criminals — historically including drug producers and traffickers — because of lax law enforcement. Such places are generally under the control of ethnic minority armed groups, either opposed to or allied with Myanmar’s central government. Some also cooperate with organized crime gangs.“From the vantage point of the Chinese government, it’s a source of extreme embarrassment that you have so many of these Chinese criminals operating all across Southeast Asia,” said Jason Tower, an expert on transnational crime with the United States Institute of Peace.The syndicates also are known for “pig butchering” cons, where scammers entice individuals, often halfway across the world, to invest their money in bogus schemes after duping them into digital romances.The scammers divide their targets into two categories: Chinese and non-Chinese. They use scripts, images of models and influencers and translation software to trick the people they contact by phone or online into parting with their money. Victims can be anywhere in the world.The criminals have “ridden on the shoulders of the Belt and Road Initiative,” said Tower, who outlined links between the criminals and Chinese state enterprises, think tanks and government officials in a 2020 report written for the United States Institute of Peace.Zhang was working in Thailand and on a visa run to Laos when he met the man who lured him to the scam compound in Myanmar. Giving what he said was his last name, Gao, he claimed to be a broker and travel agent for Chinese living in Thailand. Zhang and his wife wanted extra money to pay for in vitro fertilization to have another child. Gao suggested he go work in Myawaddy, in eastern Myanmar’s Kayin state, teaching a local chef how to cook Chinese dishes in Gao’s new restaurant. The pay would be double what Zhang made in China.Zhang was wary. Since a 2021 coup, military-controlled Myanmar has been embroiled in civil conflict. But Gao reassured him that he wouldn’t be doing anything illegal and said the restaurant would have plenty of customers since many cyber scam businesses were operating in the area.That might have raised a red flag but it was only once he got to Myanmar that Zhang realized his predicament. He asked to go back home, saying there was a family emergency. His family helped him scrape together some 40,000 yuan ($5,472) to pay off the debt Gao claimed he owed him, and he slipped away one night, swimming across the Moei River into Thailand, where he turned himself in to Thai police, who contacted the Chinese Embassy.Zhang showed the AP copies of his deportation notice from the Thai Immigration police and a temporary ID card. He returned to China in late June and was questioned by Chinese police but not detained. He has been sharing his story on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to alert others to the risks and says people often contact him about relatives trapped in cyber scam compounds.“We all went out with this wonderful sense of hope, but then reality slammed us in the face,” he said.In total, China has detained some 4,000 suspects and returned them back to China. The Ministry of Public Security has claimed “breakthrough results” through operations in coordination with Myanmar authorities. On Monday, they announced they had repatriated another 2,349 people. The ministry did not respond to a faxed request for comment.One 31-year old former chef who was smuggled into Myanmar’s Wa State earlier this year said he saw his company hand over four people to Chinese police with little fanfare in September. Other companies did the same, said the man, who was smuggled into Myanmar and later rescued by a non-profit organization. He declined to be named out of fear of government retribution, and The Associated Press could not independently verify his account.Overall, the enforcement actions don’t seem very comprehensive, experts say. The groups now based in Myanmar originally were located in Cambodia. When Cambodia cracked down on online gambling rings and illegal casinos in 2019, many of the groups just moved to less well policed places in Myanmar. Some were taken over by rival gangs.China's efforts to repair its image have so far not made much headway, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University. “You can crack down on these symptoms and the manifestations … that you can see in the borderland areas," he said, "but they’ll come back unless you really have a sustained effort." -—-AP researcher Wanqing Chen in Beijing and AP writers Grant Peck and Jintamas Saksornchai in Bangkok contributed to this report.。 专题：精准营养产业大会 精准蛋白营养 赋能全生命周期健康 2026年8月21-23日，第二届精准营养产业大会在黑龙江哈尔滨举行，大会主题为“精准蛋白营养，赋能全生命周期健康”。
二 | 会上，由中国营养学会牵头、中国飞鹤等机构联合编写的《精准营养技术与产业创新白皮书》正式发布。中国科学院上海营养与健康研究所研究员、国科大杭州高等研究院生命与科学学院首席教授林旭进行解读。 林旭首先厘清了精准营养的核心定义与学科边界，纠正行业认知偏差。他表示，早期行业多聚焦基因主导的个体化营养、基因营养学，侧重静态基因差异研究，而当下全新的精准营养理念更具系统性、动态性，充分兼顾人群差异、进食时间、进食场景、进食方式与食物品类，是一门融合多组学、系统科学、人工智能、数据科学的高度交叉前沿学科，需要多学科协同发力、联合攻关。
三 | 回顾国内精准营养产业发展与白皮书迭代历程，林旭介绍，我国精准营养研究起步与国际同步、起点领先。
四 | 早在2017年，中科院营养所联合中国营养学会基础分会、汤臣倍健共同举办精准健康与精准营养国际研讨会，汇聚哈佛大学、牛津大学、康奈尔大学等30余位国际顶尖专家，以及美国营养学会主席等行业权威，同步成立精准营养转化产业联盟，搭建国内首个精准营养产学研交流平台。依托平台科研成果，2020年国内首部《精准营养白皮书》1.0版正式发布，重点梳理全球精准营养科研前沿、产业转化机遇与挑战，引发行业广泛关注。
五 | 历经五年多行业迭代，全球精准营养科研体系、技术路径、产业模式迎来全面革新。为此，在行业专家协同发力下，全新升级的《精准营养技术与产业创新白皮书》2.0版正式问世。新版白皮书聚焦产学研融合与产业生态创新，补齐前期产业落地短板，进一步完善精准营养理论与实践体系，全方位赋能健康中国战略落地实施。 在全球科研布局层面，林旭系统梳理了各国精准营养战略布局。美国在2020至2030年推出精准营养战略远景，打破小众营养干预认知，确立“精准营养服务全民健康”的核心定位，投入1.57亿美元启动专项研究，联动14个研究中心、万名志愿者，探索人体食物应答差异的生物学机制。与此同时，以色列、欧盟、日本纷纷布局精准营养赛道，通过表型研究、多组学技术、万人队列研究，搭建个体化、数智化营养干预模型，推动精准营养标准化发展。 林旭重点分享了我国自主攻坚的前沿科研成果，彰显国产科研优势。
六 | 依托中科院科研体系，我国在2019年率先开展内稳态膳食急性挑战动态研究，早于美国相关布局。
七 | 科研团队创新拆分空腹与餐后代谢数据，首次构建二维代谢研究模型，证实不同人群对碳水、脂肪、蛋白质的代谢应答存在显著个体差异。依托国际金标准代谢舱技术，团队进一步验证，人群可根据饮食代谢效率分为三类，不同人群适配高脂、低脂饮食的代谢能力、减重效果截然不同，破解了行业长期争议的饮食适配难题。 针对乳制品、蛋白营养研究，林旭介绍，科研团队联合牛津大学开展长期队列研究，搭建全球最大红细胞膜脂肪酸库，证实乳源奇数碳脂肪酸对糖尿病、心血管疾病具备显著保护作用，填补了亚洲人群乳制品营养研究空白，为国民乳蛋白精准补充、慢病防控提供科学依据。
八 | 目前团队正持续深耕蛋白质组分的健康作用机制，持续完善全生命周期蛋白精准营养理论体系。 在产业转化层面，林旭表示，精准功能原料是连接科研与终端产品的核心载体。行业已实现从通用营养原料向精准化、功能化原料升级，飞鹤乳蛋白细分萃取、香驰大豆蛋白功能定制、益生菌精准剂量与人群适配等创新成果，推动原料从单一营养供给向靶向功能干预转型。同时，行业通过优化提取工艺、升级递送系统、明确量效关系，解决活性成分吸收利用难题，让精准营养真正落地终端市场。 最后，林旭表示，精准营养产业的蓬勃发展离不开产学研深度协同。未来将持续联动科研院所、龙头企业，深耕基础科研、原料创新、产品迭代、标准建设全链条，持续完善精准营养产业生态，让精准营养技术与成果惠及全民，推动中国精准营养产业持续向好发展。 新浪声明：所有会议实录均为现场速记整理，未经演讲者审阅，新浪网登载此文出于传递更多信息之目的，并不意味着赞同其观点或证实其描述。
九 | 责任编辑：李思阳。
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