We came across posts on the social media platforms Reddit, HardwareZone and YouTube about the following topic:

Text displayed in the posts suggested that Chinese beggars were ‘flood(ing) Malaysia’, and earning $2,400, six times that of locals.

A scan of the sources revealed that the Reddit and HardwareZone posts were both sourced from the YouTube video posted on 8 October, which was was the original source for the claims.

Additionally, the video description includes the details that on 23 and 24 September, officers from the Johor Immigration Department arrested four Chinese nationals in a crackdown. The four men, aged between 36 and 67, were all found to be disabled, and were suspected of using begging as a way to earn money.

The video clarifies that the men were found to be able to earn up to RM10,000 in a month, which they converted to be about USD2,400 in the video graphic text. A check of the online currency conversion resource xe.com calculated RM10,000 to be equivalent to about USD2,332 at the time of writing.

When we viewed the video, it turned out to be a summary of multiple news stories in one video. While the video opened with the story of the beggars arrested in Johor, it went on to mention other accounts of suspected Chinese beggar gangs operating in other parts of Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore (where the beggars were said to sell tissues rather than begging directly) and Australia.

The video was interspersed with footage from various locations, including those mentioned in the claims, and it appeared that footage from other countries such as China may also have been included, despite footage from China being unrelated to the claims.

It was not clear if any of the footage was associated with news reports. The news reports used for the claims in the video were mostly not specified, apart from one reference to an article in The Star, a Malaysian publication, for some of their accounts about Chinese beggars in Kuala Lumpur.

The narrator in the video suggested that disabled Chinese nationals were being used by Chinese criminal syndicates as a way for the gangs to earn money, and that some of the disabled beggars had been intentionally disabled by the gangs from young in order to evoke sympathy among the local populations.

The video also suggested that the implementation of visa-free agreements for Chinese tourists, such as those announced by Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand recently, were suspected to have led to larger numbers of these begging syndicates entering these countries.

Suspicious Origins

We investigated the channel where the video originated, named China Observer, and found little information about the ownership of the channel. There was also little information available on the website, which appeared to primarily serve to direct readers to their YouTube channel.

A more extensive search, however, turned up mentions of China Observer in a fact-check article on Lead Stories, a reliable fact-check resource that we have relied on previously. The article debunked false claims about the Chinese military by the China Observer and noted that the site/channel was affiliated with Vision Times and Epoch Times.

Vision Times, like Epoch Times whose claims we have debunked regularly in our fact-checks, is affiliated with the Chinese dissident spiritual movement Falun Gong, whose leadership is now based in the US after having been banned and its members persecuted in China.

Both Vision Times and Epoch Times are assessed to be news sources with low credibility due to the publication of pseudoscience, promotion of propaganda and false claims. They regularly publish stories critical of China and the Chinese Communist Party.

China Observer’s channel profile on altcensored, a website that hosts videos from YouTube that had been removed, confirmed that the channel was a production of Vision Times.

Truth of the Matter

Despite the poor credibility of the original source, we investigated the details of the story mentioned in the video description and image and found that there was some basis in reality for the claims.

Following a keyword search, we found that the video description referred to a story in Malaysian media about Chinese men arrested in Johor Bahru published on 25 to 26 September. The details in the video description of the men’s ages, date of arrest, reason for arrest and disability status were all accurately reflected in the article.

The article also quoted the director of the Johor Immigration Department, who confirmed that each man could earn up to RM10,000 a month and were assisted in their movements by the syndicates for whom they worked.

The Department of Statistics Malaysia estimates the median monthly wage in Malaysia at the end of 2023 to be RM2,900. In Johor, where the men were arrested, the figure is RM2,673. Using the smaller figure, the beggars were estimated to be able to earn up to about four times that of locals in Johor, rather than six times. It should also be noted that the figures stated in the image is the upper limit of what the beggars were able to earn. Other articles report similar beggars as being able to earn between RM2,400 and RM12,000 a month.

A search online revealed several articles reporting on the phenomenon of disabled individuals begging in Malaysia to earn for organised criminal gangs. One such story in the Star about disabled beggars in Kuala Lumpur, which seems to be the one referred to in the YouTube video, was published in Singapore’s Straits Times. The video originates from 2016, long before the introduction of the visa-free regimes.

While several of the stories involved Chinese nationals and syndicates, we noted other stories led by individuals of other nationalities, including one syndicate led by a Pakistani man who used children, rendered drowsy by cough syrup, to gain sympathy while begging. Some of the stories also noted the involvement of local accomplices.

Take Caution with Sources

In conclusion, we found that the core details we investigated of the primary stories in the video to be accurate. The video served largely as a summary of similar stories. However, given the lack of credibility of the source, and its affiliated publications’ record of utilising propaganda and falsehoods when reporting on China, we find that using China Observer as a source of information for China-related news to be unreliable.

While poor sources can occasionally report stories accurately, embellishments such as in the amount that the beggars could earn, the use of sensational language such as the beggars ‘flooding’ Malaysia, and the selective reporting to focus on Chinese nationals and syndicates, may point to an agenda by the publication to influence opinion against Chinese individuals, the Chinese government, or policies encouraging travel between China and Southeast Asian countries.

Notwithstanding the lack of reliability of the source, we find the claims of disabled beggars working for Chinese syndicates in Malaysia earning several times that of locals to be partly true with a few embellishments.