Authorities strive to fight cross-border online gambling

With the rapid development of mobile payment services, new trends are emerging in gambling, which is increasingly moving from offline to online and across borders, public security officials said on Tuesday.

"Cross-border online gambling cases are rising year by year, which seriously harms national security and social stability," said Zhang Xiaopeng, deputy director at the Public Security Management Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security.

Public security departments have stepped up efforts to combat cross-border online gambling and smashed a batch of criminal gangs involved in the activities, he said.

According to official statistics, 234,000 cases related to gambling have been cracked across the country this year.

Zhang added that it is also important to prevent gambling at the source by encouraging the general public to participate in anti-gambling activities.

Tang Xingbo, an executive in the security management department of internet giant Tencent, said some major parts in the industry chain of online gambling, such as organizers, websites and servers, are transferring overseas in an attempt to avert supervision and crackdowns.

The way funds flow in gambling activities is also changing, he said. In the past, fund settlement was made through bank cards or third-party payment platforms, but now gamblers are using individual QR codes to pay and receive money, Tang said.

Another trend is that gambling is increasingly integrating with other types of crime－for example, through fraud or luring others to buy financial futures, he added.

Tang said Tencent will work closely with public security departments to study and find out new features of online gambling and take measures to crack down on the criminal activities.

Lan Liehua, vice-president of Tencent Financial Technology, said the company has set up an intelligent risk management model to combat online gambling-related crimes by taking advantage of big data and artificial intelligence technologies.

Since the beginning of this year, nearly 1 million gambling-related transactions have been blocked every day, with a daily value amounting to hundreds of millions of yuan, he said.

Several thousand suspect accounts have been frozen, he added.

With the aim of raising public awareness on the harm of gambling and calling on society to resist and combat the criminal activities, public security authorities on Tuesday launched a national "anti-gambling promotion month" in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

During the month, public security departments across the country will hold promotional events, including news conferences, interviews and safety lessons. They will also carry out educational activities in schools, communities, factories and in rural areas.