Employees at an aesthetic medicine clinic convinced a 19-year-old with a disability to undergo breast implant surgery to help him attract fans on the internet and provide a source of income, reports Hong Kong's “South China Morning Post”. The incident took place in central China, but, as the newspaper emphasizes, this is not the only victim of fraudsters who prey on desperate Chinese youth looking for work.
The mother of a boy from Wuhan in central China told the media that her 19-year-old disabled son, who has the mental abilities of a five-year-old, underwent surgery on July 28.
The staff at the clinic where the woman said the teenager was looking for work persuaded him to undergo implantation, which was supposed to help him attract viewers for his supposedly very lucrative live webcasts. Although he was initially skeptical, he eventually decided to undergo the procedure, for which he took out a loan of 37,000 yuan (PLN 20,000).
With the help of lawyers and television, the mother managed to cancel the loan and the boy had his implants removed, but – as the mother emphasizes – the trauma remained.
“These people are beasts”
The case sparked outrage on social media, with one netizen saying: “Putting breast implants on a 19-year-old boy with the intelligence of a five-year-old – these people are beasts.” “Some beauty clinics are no different than gangs of fraudsters,” wrote another, quoted by the South China Morning Post.
Frauds, such as job offers and fake loan offers, are on the rise in China as the economy weakens, Reuters reported. Criminal investigators said last year that scammers were increasingly targeting students and recent graduates who were desperate to find work.
In July, social media went viral about a student who wanted to work part-time as a food courier. An employee at an electric scooter shop, who also posed as an employer, convinced the boy to sign a contract to rent a scooter. Shortly after, it turned out that the promised earnings were many times lower and barely covered the cost of the scooter.
Youth unemployment
Youth unemployment hit a record high of 21.3% last June, or about 30 million people. Chinese authorities withheld the data at the time, saying they needed to change the calculation of the rate by excluding students. The latest figures show that the unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds was 17.1% in July, up from 13.2% in June this year.
People in this age group have trouble finding work because they are “too young” and inexperienced. On the other hand, their colleagues 10 years older, if they have a job, cling to it because job offers routinely exclude people under 40 as “too old”, which is called the “curse of the 35-year-olds”.
“Finding a job is hard enough, now we have to watch out for scams,” one internet user concluded.
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