In a virtual kidnapping case reported March 16, a woman in Jiangsu province received a phone call claiming that her son had been kidnapped and that the crying in the background was him.

The woman was able to confirm that her son had not been kidnapped, however, by checking with his school, which informed her that her son was in class. The woman informed the authorities, who later found that the criminals had obtained the family’s personal data before attempting the virtual kidnapping.

The son attended the BISS Beijing International School. Many students, foreign and local, attend the school, so it is not clear if the boy was a foreigner, but given that one student at the school has been targeted means information on other foreign students may be available to the virtual kidnappers.

In China, anyone’s personal information is available at a price. The Chinese media reported March 16 that the personal information of more than 10,000 executives in Henan was being sold online.

Some of these executives already have been contacted and ordered to deposit money into various accounts on threat of physical harm, and the authorities have said that the majority of the threatening calls have come from persons who purchased the executives’ personal data online.

Links to Web sites offering such services are even available on the Baidu search engine, a popular Chinese Web portal. Similarly, Chinese media reported March 10 that hospitals have capitalized on selling pregnant women’s information for marketing purposes. The data is usually sold for 1 yuan (approximately 15 cents) to thousands of companies in the maternity product industries. In still another such situation, this one reported March 15, a telephone sales company in Beijing was running telemarketing scams that included selling customers’ personal data for prices ranging between 1 mao (approximately 1 cent) and 50 yuan (approximately $7.50) per record.

Selling such information en masse can yield a significant profit. And during times of financial downturn, the pressure to make up for financial losses by selling confidential information only increases.

While identity theft has long been a fear in many Western countries, where access to vital personal information (including credit card accounts) can lead to significant financial losses.

But in China, the credit card culture is still rather limited, and incidents of credit card and personal identity theft remain low. New evidence suggests an emerging problem with credit card fraud as the use of credit cards increases. According to March 10 media reports, a woman went to her bank in Ningbo to inquire about her credit record only to find that earlier this year a credit card account was already opened in her name, most likely by someone who had gained access to her personal information. Just as with virtual kidnappings, the occurrence of credit card fraud is attributed to the ease of access to personal information in China.

As noted before, foreigners are not the main target in these information scams. Nevertheless, foreigners’ personal information often is collected in the same manner as that of Chinese citizens. Companies, hospitals, hotels and other businesses have been known to supplement falling sales with this profitable industry.

STRATFOR knows of instances of personal information being sold for marketing purposes without consent, but we have yet to have heard of true personal identity theft targeting Westerners. But given that the price of personal information is no bar to petty criminals in China, the risk of identity theft — and kidnappings, whether real or virtual — is very real.

March 12

·A gambler who owed high-interest loans kidnapped the manager of a construction company in Nanchang, Jiangxi province. A worker at the company tried to chase the kidnapper in a taxi, but was unable to keep up. The gambler demanded 2 million yuan (about $293,000) in ransom money from the managers’ wife and son. The police tracked down four kidnappers and detained them.

·Police in Zushui, Guangzhou province, freed four young girls forced into prostitution from a brothel in Yushui township. At the same time, the police detained four suspects sought by Chongqing police. After investigations it was discovered that the four suspects were unemployed and living in Yushui, and to make money decided to go to another region to kidnap some girls to work in brothels. They rented a “bread van” and traveled to Wulong in Chongqing, and after using the services at a “health center” tricked the girls into the van and kidnapped them. The girls were discovered when the police carried out a safety check on the hairdressing salon where the girls were held.

March 13

·Nearly 1,000 villagers from the area around Zhaoqing in Guangdong clashed with hundreds of police outside a government building after the authorities stopped their protest against land requisitions. The villagers were protesting what they said was inadequate compensation for farmland forcibly requisitioned in Maan town for an 86 billion yuan ($12.6 billion) railway connecting Guangzhou and Guizhou province.

·An online retail outlet in Zhejiang province fronting as a cell phone store was discovered if fact to be selling guns described as able to wound someone despite the fact that they were airguns. Twenty such guns were sold through the outlet over several months, all of which police tracked down.

March 14

·Police freed a 21-year-old in Jincheng, Shanxi province kidnapped and held ransom for eight days after going to what he thought was a job interview. He was given a fake address where upon his arrival, he was kidnapped and a ransom was demanded from his family.

March 16

·Industrial and commercial authorities across China investigated about 76,500 fake food cases in 2008 involving 274 million yuan (about $40.3 million) in value, according to a high-level meeting on consumption.

·Two women were confronted by customs officials March 8 at Meilan airport in Haikou, Hainan Island. Their luggage contained whitish-yellow powder which led to the discovery and seizure of 4 kilograms of heroin.

·         The police drugs squad in Miyi county, Sichuan province, received information about the registration plate of a rented “bread van” used to transport drugs on the expressway to Xichang. The vehicle was duly stopped and checked and was found to contain 45,000 yuan ($6,600) worth of heroin. The driver and two other suspects were detained.

·A government office in an ethnic Tibetan part of China’s southwestern province of Sichuan reportedly was hit by a bomb.

March 17

·A student died March 8 during interrogation after confessing to the murder of a classmate in Shangluo, Shaanxi province, according to media reports. His family reportedly received 119,500 yuan ($17,500) compensation from the police.

·The provincial public security department in Guangdong reported that it handled more than 30,000 criminal cases in February — 28.5 per cent more than during the same time last year — and 486 economic cases, up nearly 80 per cent. The report cited an increase in criminals using minivans for drive-by robberies, in which they dragged victims into the vehicles and either robbed them or demanded the personal identity numbers to access their bank accounts.

·A truck driver kidnapped a coal mine boss in Qingshuihe county, Inner Mongolia. The truck was later tracked down during a regular patrol and stopped, and three suspects were detained. The victim was safely released.

·Police in Daluo, Yunnan province, cracked three drugs cases along the Kunming-Bangkok international expressway, seizing 9.06 kilograms of narcotics, detaining eight suspects and impounding one narcotics transportation vehicle.

·According to police reports, a special operation in Huaiji, Guangdong province, to “seize guns and control explosives” has closed two underground gun factories and lead to the seizure of 108 illegal firearms and the detention of two suspects.

March 18

·Police captured two suspects in Nanfeng, Jiangxi province, believed responsible robbing a jewelry shop and shooting its owner March 6.

March 19

·Beijing police rounded up several dozen evicted home owners planning to march to the nerve center of the country’s communist leadership. Around 70 people, mostly elderly and middle aged, offered no challenge to the well-prepared security forces who swept down on them before they had departed.