Jailed Gambling Mogul Who Built ‘World’s Strangest City’ Claims to be Abused Chinese Spy
Posted on: January 27, 2025, 05:04h.
Last updated on: January 28, 2025, 09:17h.
A controversial gambling magnate arrested in Thailand in 2022 at the behest of the Chinese government is now confined to a wheelchair because of “inhumane” treatment by his Thai captors, according to his lawyer.

Chinese Cambodian businessman She Zhijiang is the chairman of Hong Kong-registered Yatai International Holdings Group. His company is responsible for the development of Yatai New City, or Shwe Kokko, in Myanmar’s semi-lawless Kayin (Karen) State.
The project was billed as a Singapore-like high-tech business hub, a “smart city” of “science and technology, gambling and entertainment, tourism, culture, and agriculture,” according to planning documents.
Instead, it’s become a reputed hotbed of new casinos, illegal online gambling, scam operations, and human trafficking, according to numerous reports.
War-Torn Boom Town
The development is one of the world’s strangest cities, a neon boomtown in a war-torn region controlled by ethnic insurgents who have pledged nominal loyalty to the military junta while retaining de facto autonomy.
She is currently fighting extradition to his native China where he is wanted for running illegal online gambling operations from Southeast Asia that have targeted Chinese citizens.
In 2014, he was convicted in absentia by a Chinese court for operating an illegal lottery business from the Philippines that targeted Chinese citizens. The business generated profits of $298 million for She, according to Chinese prosecutors.
She, also known as She Kailun, She Lunkai, Dylan She, and Tang Kriang Kai, among other aliases, has claimed since his arrest in Bangkok on an Interpol red notice that he is a Chinese spy who disobeyed orders. He says his arrest is “politically motivated.” He told Al Jazeera in a September video interview from behind bars that he would be “killed” if he returned to his home country.
In a letter to Interpol, dated January 9 and seen by Reuters, She’s lawyers claim their client has been kept in solitary confinement, chained, and has suffered violence that has left him unable to walk. He has also been denied medical attention and contact with his family, while being subjected to unwanted visits from Chinese officials, according to the letter.
She’s lawyers are hoping to persuade Interpol to dismiss the red notice, which was requested by China. By its own rules, the international law enforcement agency is prohibited from endorsing politically motivated arrests.
She Says, He Says
In the Al Jazeera interview, She claimed he was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to oversee foreign intelligence in 2016 in return for the government dropping the illegal gambling case against him. He also claimed the Chinese wanted him to build a “colony” in Myanmar, as part of its Belt and Road economic plan.
She has always claimed in promotional literature that the Yatai development was part of Beijing’s Belt and Road global infrastructure development strategy – a long-term plan to develop a China-centered global trading network by 2049. The Chinese government has denied backing the development, underlining that it does not sanction overseas gambling projects.
In December 2023, the UK imposed economic sanctions on She for his alleged links to “forced labor schemes” in which “victims were trafficked to work for online scam farms.”
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