Two arrested as Chinese agents in NYC
U.S. says men ran ‘secret police’ outpost in Chinatown to intimidate dissidents
NEW YORK — Two men were arrested Monday and charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government in connection with a secret police outpost they operated in Manhattan’s Chinatown, federal officials announced.
The men are accused of using the police outpost to intimidate Chinese dissidents living in the United States, on behalf of the People’s Republic of China. Charges were also unveiled in two related cases: one against 34 Chinese police officers accused of harassing Chinese nationals who lived in the New York area, and another against eight Chinese officials accused of directing an employee of a U.S.-based tech company to remove dissidents from the platform.
The Manhattan police outpost, which court papers say was run by Chinese security officials, is one of more than 100 Chinese police operations worldwide that have unnerved diplomats and intelligence officials. The case represents the first time criminal charges have been brought in connection with such a police outpost, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
The charges against the men said to have operated it, Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, grew out of an investigation by the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn into the outpost, which conducted police operations without jurisdiction or diplomatic approval.
“Today’s charges are a crystal-clear response to the PRC that we are on to you, we know what you’re doing and we will stop it from happening in the United States of America,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China. “We don’t need or want a secret police station in our great city.”
Officials described the three cases as being part of a worldwide effort to suppress criticism of China’s government.
David Newman, the Justice Department’s top national security official in Washington, said that “the People’s Republic of China, through its Ministry of Public Security, has engaged in a multifront campaign to extend the reach and impact of its authoritarian system into the United States and elsewhere around the world.”
Last fall, as part of its investigation, FBI counterintelligence agents searched the police outpost’s offices, located on the third floor of a nondescript building at 107 E. Broadway. The search amounted to an escalation in the global dispute over China’s efforts to police its diaspora far beyond its borders.
Officials in Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands have called on China to shut down similar operations in their countries. The FBI raid in New York was the first known example of authorities seizing materials from one of the outposts.
Lu, who is also known as Harry Lu, lives in the Bronx and maintains a residence in China. Chen lives in Manhattan. Both are U.S. citizens. It could not immediately be determined whether they had lawyers.
In 2018 IRS filings, Lu was listed as the president of a nonprofit organization called the America Changle Association NY, whose offices housed the police outpost. A criminal complaint unsealed on Monday said that the group was formed in 2013 and lists its charitable mission as a “social gathering place” for people from the Chinese city of Fuzhou. The complaint says Lu serves as the association’s general adviser and Chen as its secretary-general.