Ivan Franceschini

Running the gamut from the infamous 'pig butchering' romance con to sophisticated online extortion and investment fraud, Southeast Asia has emerged as the global hub for cybercrime. Based on years of field research, Scam takes an in-depth look at the history and inner dynamics of the region's online scam industry. Revealed are the appalling working conditions - akin to modern slavery - in the hundreds of prisonlike compounds that have mushroomed throughout multiple countries. The result is a shocking exposé of victims forced to be perpetrators, a tragic modern tale.

Is China part of the world? Based on much of the political, media, and popular discourse in the West the answer is seemingly no. Even after four decades of integration into the global socioeconomic system, discussions of China continue to be underpinned by a core assumption: that the country represents a fundamentally different 'other' that somehow exists outside the 'real' world. Either implicitly or explicitly, China is generally depicted as an external force with the potential to impact on the 'normal' functioning of things. This core assumption, of China as an orientalised, externalised, and separate 'other', ultimately produces a distorted image of both China and the world. This Element seeks to illuminate the ways in which the country and people form an integral part of the global capitalist system. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.