A growing scandal is erupting in China as the regime detains victims of a collapsed state-linked investment firm—targeting them not for fraud, but for daring to speak out. The fallout underscores the Chinese Communist Party’s growing desperation as public trust crumbles and the economy falters under mounting pressure from U.S. tariffs.

At the heart of the controversy is the Shandong Jianghaihui Financial Group, a government-supported company that abruptly shut down in March. Its founder fled to the U.S., leaving over 100,000 small investors out nearly $2.74 billion. Many believed the firm was part of Beijing’s official push to stimulate private enterprise. Now, they’re being branded enemies of the state.

When victims tried to tell their stories to foreign outlets—such as Radio Free Asia—Chinese police pounced. Dozens have been detained, most of them middle-class women who defied government media blackouts to demand answers and restitution. Authorities have accused them of collaborating with “overseas anti-China forces,” a catch-all term the regime uses to silence dissent.

“All the people who had contacted you from here were detained,” one source in Shandong told RFA. “They said we were being used by international anti-China forces and that we were all committing crimes.”

These aren’t dissidents, revolutionaries, or activists. These are ordinary citizens, many of them mothers and retirees, who saw their life savings vanish after trusting a firm with government licenses and years of official audits. Their only crime? Trying to hold their own government accountable for failing to regulate a company that appeared fully legitimate—until it collapsed overnight.

The Chinese regime’s response has been brutal. According to RFA, police reviewed foreign reports, tracked down the sources, and detained them. Some were released quickly, but others remain in custody, accused of tarnishing the government’s image at a politically sensitive time.

That timing is no coincidence. China’s economy is being battered by President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs, which have led to collapsing export orders and massive job losses across the country. Beijing is desperate to project strength and stability. The last thing it wants is thousands of scammed investors flooding social media with images of their financial ruin—and pointing fingers at the government’s regulatory failures.

Making matters worse for the Communist Party, some of the victims have directly challenged the official narrative. In a letter to the party’s disciplinary commission, they criticized officials for calling the scandal “illegal fundraising” rather than the contract fraud it plainly appears to be. That distinction matters: calling it fundraising shifts the blame onto investors, while “fraud” implies state complicity.

Unfortunately, this is far from the first time Chinese authorities have protected corrupt financial elites over their citizens. Just last year, Zhongrong International Trust—once valued at $108 billion—imploded, triggering massive protests that state media ignored and police suppressed with violence. Elderly demonstrators and cancer patients were dragged from protest sites while China’s propaganda machine stayed silent.

Now, China watchers say President Xi Jinping is likely to unleash another wave of repression to control the damage. “Xi today has the same mentality as Mao,” one government adviser told the Wall Street Journal. “His bottom line is that no major crisis will be allowed to endanger his hold on power.”

With President Trump’s tariffs deepening China’s financial woes and citizen unrest spreading, the regime’s playbook appears unchanged: silence the victims, protect the power structure, and blame foreigners. But the cracks are widening.

And in a tightly controlled society like China, when middle-class women start speaking out—despite the risk of arrest—it’s often a sign the dam is about to break.