{"id":54552,"date":"2025-02-07T20:06:03","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T04:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/chinese-filmmaker-says-vietnamese-officers-asked-him-for-bribes-during-hanoi-visit\/"},"modified":"2025-02-07T20:06:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T04:06:03","slug":"chinese-filmmaker-says-vietnamese-officers-asked-him-for-bribes-during-hanoi-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/chinese-filmmaker-says-vietnamese-officers-asked-him-for-bribes-during-hanoi-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese filmmaker says Vietnamese officers asked him for bribes during Hanoi visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read a version of this story in Vietnamese<\/a><\/p>\n

Vietnamese immigration authorities repeatedly attempted to extract bribes out of a well-known Chinese filmmaker when he entered and exited the country, he said on social media.<\/p>\n

Wu Dong, better known by his stage name Huazong, expressed frustration on his X account this week, saying that immigration officers at Hanoi\u2019s Noi Bai International Airport tried to hint that they wanted money for letting him enter or leave Vietnam in 2023 and 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really frustrating that I had to deal with a bribe request again when entering the country,\u201d he said in a tweet dated Feb. 4. \u201cWhen I refused to pay, they sent me back to the queue.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another tweet that day, he posted a photo of an immigration officer sitting at an immigration counter, and wrote, \u201cThis official (face blurred) spent a long five minutes hinting at a bribe -\u2013 broken English, broken Chinese, kept his voice low. Meanwhile, a crowd of nearly 20 travelers waited behind me during this awkward standoff.”<\/p>\n

When he was asked to return to the line, another officer showed him in a translated message on his phone that \u201c100 yuan clears you through.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a tweet dated Feb. 5, Wu said he had filed a complaint but he hadn\u2019t received a response.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll keep emailing the media and inspection department,\u201d he said. \u201cWorst case, I might be banned from entering the country in the future. It\u2019s shocking how long this systemic corruption has persisted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Radio Free Asia messaged Wu over X, who confirmed the incident but did not provide further details.<\/p>\n

Vietnam\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to emails requesting comment.<\/p>\n

Not the first time<\/b><\/h3>\n

This wasn\u2019t the first time that officials demanded bribes, Wu said. In tweets from 2023, he described how on three occasions similar incidents occurred.<\/p>\n

He wrote how the immigration officers are able to ask for bribes without saying so by pointing to pictures of money on their cellphones or pointing at bills in their notebooks.<\/p>\n

In one tweet, he said he had been asked in this way, with the immigration officer saying \u201cxiaofei<\/i>,\u201d which means \u201ctip\u201d in Mandarin.<\/p>\n

Wu wrote that he didn\u2019t want to pay the bribe, but also didn\u2019t want the hassle, so he offered a US$1 bill.<\/p>\n

The officer then said \u201cTen,\u201d in English, but Wu was able to talk him down to $3.<\/p>\n

He detailed several similar incidents of immigration officials asking for bribes in Chinese or English.<\/p>\n

Wu wrote that because multiple immigration officers had asked him for bribes during separate trips to Hanoi that he believes that corruption is system-wide.<\/p>\n

He also wrote that after sharing his experience on social media, many other people responded with similar stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cI strongly recommend the Vietnamese government to rectify this problem,\u201d he wrote. \u201cPlease install cameras at the immigration officer\u2019s workstations as this will help curb corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster. <\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tin t\u1eeb RFA Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read a version of this story in Vietnamese Vietnamese immigration authorities repeatedly attempted to extract bribes out of a well-known Chinese filmmaker when he entered and exited the country, he said on social media. Wu Dong, better known by his stage name Huazong, expressed frustration on his X account this week, saying that immigration officers …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[246,251],"class_list":["post-54552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vietnam","tag-english","tag-rfa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietvalley.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}