China’s illegal police stations in the world
The US house of Representatives last week voted unanimously to condemn China for a “brazen violation” of US sovereignty and efforts to “deceive the international community through false claims about its intelligence collection campaigns.”
US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said the Chinese balloon’s intrusion was part of a pattern of aggressive behavior by Beijing. The ambassador noted China’s recent beaming of military-grade laser on a Philippine coast guard patrol vessel, the harassment of US planes by Chinese jets, and China’s opening of illegal police stations in the US, Ireland and other countries.
“If China wants to be a respected member of the international community, then it should act appropriately to certain basic premises,” Emanuel said. “That is, you don’t open police stations in other countries… as if your laws don’t have any boundaries. This is not exactly the qualities and characteristics of the good neighbor policy.”
A CNN article—exclusive: China operating over 100 police stations across the world with the help of some host nations, report claims—written by Nina dos Santos said China has set up more than 100 overseas police stations across the globe to monitor, harass and in some cases repatriate Chinese citizens living in exile, using bilateral security arrangements struck with countries in Europe and Africa to gain a widespread presence internationally.
“Madrid-based human rights campaigner Safeguard Defenders says it found evidence China was operating 48 additional police stations abroad since the group first revealed the existence of 54 such stations in September. Its new release— dubbed “Patrol and Persuade”—focuses on the scale of the network and examines the role that joint policing initiatives between China and several European nations, including Italy, Croatia, Serbia and Romania have played in piloting a wider expansion of Chinese overseas stations than was known until the organization’s revelations came out.”
“Among the fresh claims leveled by the group: that a Chinese citizen was coerced into returning home by operatives working undercover in a Chinese overseas police station in a Paris suburb, expressly recruited for that purpose, in addition to an earlier disclosure that two more Chinese exiles have been forcibly returned from Europe—one in Serbia, the other in Spain,” the report said.
“When approached by CNN about Safeguard Defenders’ original allegations, China’s foreign affairs ministry said the overseas stations were staffed by volunteers. However, the organization’s latest report claims one police network it examined had hired 135 people for its first 21 stations. The organization also sourced a three-year contract for a worker hired at an overseas station in Stockholm.”
Undeclared consular activities outside of a nation’s official diplomatic missions are highly unusual and illegal, unless a host nation has given its explicit consent, and the Safeguard Defenders report claims China’s overseas offices predate the pandemic by several years.
The report has prompted investigations in at least 13 different countries so far and inflamed an increasingly heated diplomatic tussle between China and nations like Canada, home to a large Chinese diaspora.
Safeguard Defenders stumbled on the police networks while trying to assess the scale of China’s efforts to persuade some of its people to return to China even against their will, which, based on official Chinese data, could number almost a quarter of a million people around the world.
“What we see coming from China is increasing attempts to crack down on dissent everywhere in the world, to threaten people, harass people, make sure that they are fearful enough so that they remain silent or else face being returned to China against their will,” said Safeguard Defenders Campaign Director Laura Harth.in November, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Homeland Security Committee he was deeply concerned about the revelations. “It is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop in New York, let’s say, without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes,” he said.
China, however, pushed back on claims it was operating police stations on US soil, calling the New York “service station” volunteer-run, after the FBI director said he was “very concerned” about unauthorized stations that have been linked to Beijing’s influence operations.
Ireland has shut down the Chinese police station found on its territory, while the Netherlands, which has taken similar measures, has a probe underway, as does Spain.
Harth told CNN the organization will likely find more stations in the future. “It’s the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “China is not hiding what it is doing. They expressly say that they are going to expand these operations so let’s take that seriously.”