Global Watch | How China is quashing dissent abroad through illegal police stations

The Chinese secret overseas policing is considered a potent weapon of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to handle any external dissent beyond its territorial borders. At present, 54 nations with over 110 stations are reportedly functioning under the mandate of the CCP, undertaking monitoring and coercion of nearly 230,000 Chinese living abroad to return to China and face charges for raising concerns over the brutality of Xi Jinping’s regime. The typical modus operandi of the secret Police is to control Chinese residents by hook or crook; the tactics adopted by the Chinese police range from threats, coercion, illegal arrests and forced disappearances of family members living in China, kidnapping, or luring Chinese dissidents to a foreign country having relatively less strict laws or with whom China holds good bilateral relations. Persuasion, intimidation, and harassment are utilised, either through the victim’s family, friends, and loved ones staying in China, or with agents approaching the target overseas. The most common threats typically include threats that family members will be arrested or worse if the ‘target’ does not return or undertake an act of covert cooperation, the host country is tricked to force the target into travelling to a third country from where they can be extradited or simply handed over to Chinese agents for deportation without due process.  Chinese secret police stations set up in foreign countries play an important role in all these activities. There are designated Chinese officials who usually run the operations of the stations and the police personnel are posted mostly as undercover or they simply travel under aliases to kidnap any target. Controlled by the Ministry of Public Security and aided by the Chinese intelligence agency; MSS, these illegal police stations have spread over North and South America, Asia, Europe and other locations where Chinese dissidents or their families reside. A Madrid-based human rights watchdog Safeguard Defenders published records of newly established 48 Chinese overseas policing agencies after it initially reported 54 such facilities in September 2022. The extent of such covert infrastructure puts a question mark on the collaborative efforts between enforcement agencies of China and many EU states, like Serbia, Italy, Croatia and Romania, which are key partners to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project. Beijing has maintained that these overseas centres are operated through volunteers looking to support their society at large, instead of security personnel or government staff. China’s claim is that these centres (which are actually illegal Chinese police stations) are mainly utilised to deliver administrative assistance like renewing driving permits, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin stated some time ago that these ‘centres’ or ‘agencies’ were providing assistance to Chinese citizens living abroad who were unable to travel back to China due to lockdowns; however, these stations have been called off at present and the services have been largely online. Beijing has also tried to mislead by claiming that inquiries conducted by agencies worldwide, especially in America, have corroborated some of its assertions. While the Chinese foreign ministry stated that the country is clamping down on illicit activity abroad, it additionally reiterated that all of its operations are in accordance with international norms and that Western accusations are attempts to smear China and this is anti-China propaganda. The facts however speak otherwise. A well-known case from the past, illustrated here is about the public security offices of Nantong and Wenzhou (cities on China’s South-East coast) which have piloted such clandestine operations since 2014. Similar measures were also followed by the Qingtian authorities in 2018, performed by the Fuzhou Public Security Department. Using the various BRI/ MSRI nations, the Chinese have established cordial relations to establish bases in carrying out various illicit activities like Operation FoxHunt- an operation to chase and capture Chinese dissidents abroad. In this context, the lack of inactivity of the ‘host state’ remains a mystery, to avoid public apprehension and to prioritise bilateral trade with China above citizen security. The covert operations of “Overseas 110”(as 110 illegal Chinese police stations are often referred to) are a mystery, while the Chinese motivation for setting them is not. Very recently in April 2023, the world witnessed two Chinese individuals (Harry Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59) being detained by US officials for allegedly establishing an ‘overseas police station’ in New York. These were reportedly the first arrests globally to unveil China’s efforts to establish overseas police bases. Digging further into the case, dozens of Chinese security personnel were found to be affiliated with carrying out regular surveillance and harassing Chinese dissidents in America. In line with this event, similar investigations were launched in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada. The Dutch government reportedly ordered the immediate closure and cessation of these illegal Chinese offices in the Netherlands without Dutch knowledge or authorisation, to track Chinese dissidents abroad. Such brutal crushing of dissent, criticizing the repressive regime of the CCP could be witnessed within the Chinese mainland and occupied territories in the past but the fact that such operations were taking place abroad might be beyond the comprehension of most of the affected nations. It is important to mount a collective effort globally to coordinate and eradicate these Chinese operations to safeguard the interests of the Chinese overseas citizens and their family members living in China. The exposé by Safeguard Defenders is considered limited in scope. The operations of the Chinese through these illegal police stations are carried out on a much larger scale. It is imperative that these activities should be mapped, exposed and stopped with immediate effect as this amounts to challenging the sovereignty of those nations where these illegal police stations are operating. It is highly likely that targeting Chinese dissidents could be only one of its agenda, it might have been used for sabotage and counter-espionage across the world. The writer is an author and columnist and has written several books. He tweets @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.