Beijing’s long arm – The attempt to control Chinese diaspora and dissidents worldwide
More than 100 secret Chinese police stations across the world, including one in Los Angeles, harasses and intimidates its dissidents, attempting to silence them from speaking out against the Beijing government and the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
While that might not surprise anyone tracking authoritarian governments, what might boggle many is that no U.S. entities in law enforcement or diplomacy would discuss the issue in detail.
Information about these police stations, including their locations, comes from Safeguard Defenders, a human rights organization in Spain, that tracks Fox Hunt, an operation run by the People’s Republic of China to control and, sometimes, return its dissidents to face legal proceedings.
One of these police stations, in New York, was recently closed and two people were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for failing to register as foreign agents. The Associated Press reported that while the police stations can be helpful – such as assisting Chinese citizens in renewing their Chinese driver’s licenses – it can also have a “sinister” function – “helping the Chinese government locate pro-democracy activists of Chinese descent.”
“This goes hand in hand with China’s attempt to establish supreme control over the ethnic Chinese diaspora around the world, regardless of citizenship,” Safeguard Defenders Director Peter Dahlin told SD METRO. “China doesn’t care about citizenship.
“China considers anyone who’s ethnically Chinese to be under their mandate. It doesn’t matter if they’re in or outside of China,” he added.
The 102 police stations, in more than 50 countries, including some in the U.S.’s leading allies, Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom, aren’t run by a Chinese national police force, says Dahlin. Instead, they’re outposts for the police from four Chinese cities, Qingtian, Fuzhou, Nantong, and Wenzhou.
In addition to being discreet – often placed within the confines of a Chinese cultural or trade association – they’re rarely disclosed to the host country in which they operate, he says.
“They will ask those associations to help them target and harass people they want returned to China,” Dahlin said. “A lot of these cultural associations around the world are being co-opted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
The police station in Los Angeles, Dahlin says, is from Wenzhou. The one in New York was run by Fuzhou.
The Los Angeles Police Department wouldn’t confirm the station’s existence to SD METRO.
As for the success of these police outposts, Dahlin said, “Chinese official sources claimed these police stations have helped return 84 people to face legal issues back home.”
It’s unknown if any came from the United States. According to the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, China and the United States do not have an extradition treaty with one another.
Safeguard Defenders bases its information on Chinese sources not meant for a foreign audience.
“The structural hierarchy of power in China is such that the lower levels always need to try to impress their superiors,” Dahlin said. “The way to do that is to issue glowing reports of their work, including controlling the overseas diaspora, is inside the local police bulletin board or some local newspaper that is intended and read by CCP officials in that region or province.”
The U.S. State Department didn’t return SD METRO emails seeking comment about the issue; according to one published report, from The Economist magazine, China never seeks permission to open these police stations.
Even though they arrested people at the secret Chinese police station in New York, the FBI wouldn’t confirm the existence of the one in Los Angeles. Instead, it emailed the same statement it issued last time SD METRO asked for comment about Chinese dissidents, saying, “We’re increasingly conducting outreach to raise awareness of how some countries’ governments harass and intimidate their own citizens living in the U.S. This violates U.S. law and individual rights and freedoms and will not be tolerated.”
Besides Safeguard Defenders, only one other party involved in the issue replied at length to SD METRO’s inquiries – China.
“Fighting cross-border crimes, repatriating corrupt fugitives, and recovering illegal proceeds are a just cause widely recognized by the international community. In pursuing international cooperation in this field, Chinese law-enforcement authorities strictly abide by international law, fully respect other countries’ laws and judicial sovereignty, and protect the lawful rights and interests of the suspects, which is fully justified and legitimate,” said Liu Pengyu, the Chinese Embassy spokesman in Washington, in an email.
“China adheres to the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, strictly observes international laws and respects the judicial sovereignty of all countries. We have made it clear many times that there are no ‘overseas police stations,’” he added.
“The relevant sites were established to assist Chinese citizens who are unable to return to their country during the pandemic to apply for physical examination services when their Chinese driver’s licenses expired. The sites were provided by local Chinese communities. The volunteer service personnel are all local Chinese, not police officers. They did not engage in any activities that violate U.S. laws. As the pandemic situation changes, relevant service stations have been closed,” Pengyu continued.
History of Chinese Dissidents
Fox Hunt is no surprise when viewed in the context of Chinese history, experts say.
“The Chinese Revolution in 1911 that overthrew the Qing Dynasty was quite heavily funded by people overseas,” said Ian Johnson, a China expert at the New York-based Council of Foreign Relations.
Sun Zhongshan, sometimes referred to as Sun Yat-sen, who helped topple the Dynasty in 1911 and replace it with a Republic of China, traveled the world – to Hawaii, Singapore, and Europe – he said, raising money for the revolution.
As worrisome as today’s dissidents might be to Beijing, much of their concern has to do with how the government and the CCP are seen at home.
Competence is the reigning issue, said Timothy Heath, a defense researcher with the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND Corporation.
“(Chinese) expats only got traction because the government they opposed, the Qing Dynasty, was so corrupt and ineffective that it was very vulnerable to widespread protest,” he said. “It’s not a coincidence that the Chinese government today has become more concerned about these individuals in a time when Beijing’s performance is disappointing.”
While the latest numbers show China’s economy growing faster in this year’s first quarter compared to a year ago, Beijing worries about its overseas dissidents remains heightened.
“People are becoming more and more dissatisfied,” Heath said. “So that makes for a much more volatile domestic political situation, which is why (Beijing) cares so much about dissident voices.”
Said Johnson: “People under 40 – who likely don’t recall the Tiananmen Square protests – are encountering the first sustained series of problems in their lifetime.”
Between the 1990s and the first two decades of the 21st century, he said, China’s economy grew, on average, about 9% a year.
“So, if you’re living in that kind of an environment, you have opportunities. There’s not a lot of reason to doubt the government,” Johnson said.
But economic woes, plus the “botched response” to COVID-19 – including lockdowns and requiring people to wear masks while the rest of the world opened – “caused a lot of people to doubt the party’s ability to manage the country,” he said, especially during a worldwide televised sporting event.
The World Cup, held between November and December 2022, elevated those uncertainties.
“People could see all these fans in the stadiums without masks, and they’re like, ‘Why are we still wearing masks? Why can’t we go to a stadium?’ That caused a lot of protests and unhappiness, and I think the whole economy also, especially for young people, has been destructive,” Johnson said.
As to whether today’s dissidents could overthrow the CCP or the government, Heath and Johnson say it’s doubtful.
“The government is way too entrenched, and although there is discontent, there is not the level of crisis in China like there was in the late Qing Dynasty,” Heath said. “The goal (from the most vocal dissidents) isn’t to overthrow the CCP. The threat they pose is to the CCP narrative.
“They’re claiming Chinese can have perspectives, values and political ideals that are different from the CCP,” he continued.
If their ideas were accepted by large swaths of China’s population, Heath said, problems could emerge.
“The spread of opposing political worldviews could lead if not to the overthrow at least the destabilization of CCP rule,” he said.
These police outposts, Dahlin says, have another job, too.
“Sometimes they try to force them back to China,” he said. “When that’s not possible, they harass and intimidate them. It’s for a political purpose – to ensure they’re silenced.”
According to The Economist magazine, about 10.5 million Chinese born in mainland China live outside of the country. According to another published report, from the United States Air Force, the number rises to 60 million if their descendants are included.
“Many of them read and write in Chinese,” Heath said. “They have political views, and very few are clones of the CCP.”
Adds Dahlin: “The number of people leaving China has increased dramatically since (the current CCP general secretary) Xi Jinping came to power. Last year, more Chinese people sought asylum around the world than in the 10 years his predecessor, Hu Jintao, was the CCP general secretary. It’s becoming important for the CCP to control this group.”
During the Hu Jintao era, about 160,000 people left China compared to, so far, more than 700,000 during Xi Jinping’s time as the CCP’s general secretary, Safeguard Defenders says.
The organization says the information is from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, which, when asked, didn’t answer SD METRO’s emails seeking confirmation about the numbers.
Page can be reached at dpage@sandiegometro.com
