I got my first call in Chinese a couple of days after I applied for for my visa to China so I assumed it was legit and related initially (e.g. they want more documents or something). Fortunately I don't speak Mandarin so once I tracked down my coworker and asked him to translate he told me it was a known scam.
If I can figure out the right button to press to get a human, I explain to the Chinese scammers that my Mandarin is really poor, but that I would love to hear what they think about the 6/4 Incident.
I don't think it necessarily has to do with visa to China. I started receiving a ton of spam calls in mandarin despite never applying for a visa to China or having a partner from China or ordering anything from Chinese services like Alibaba.
However, I find it interesting that those calls started shortly after I graduated college and started my first big tech job.
My Chinese wife receives phone calls like this all the time. Either it's DHL telling her she has a package to pick up (in a completely different state) or it's the consulate asking for some information. I guess my phone number got in with hers somewhere along the line as I've also received a call or two like this.
My wife and I have cell phones in the 650 prefix that are less than 1000 apart and my number is less than hers; the Mandarin scam calls come to my number a couple minutes before hers... I'm pretty sure they're just war dialing the whole area code. You can usually guess it's them because they spoof 415 numbers or 213 numbers.
I also get the DHL scam calls. Once I tried telling them that I was American and didn't speak Chinese (which is about the extent of my very rusty Mandarin knowledge) and it stopped the calls for a couple of months. That tactic did not work the second time around, though. :(
