China operates more than 100 police stations worldwide: exclusive report

Beijing has set up more than 100 so-called overseas police stations around the world to monitor, harass and, in some cases, repatriate Chinese nationals living in exile, using bilateral security deals struck with countries in Europe and Africa to gain a foothold. widespread international. The information is again shared exclusively with the report CNN 🇧🇷

Madrid-based human rights group Safeguard Defenders says it has found evidence that 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 countries, including Italy, Croatia, Serbia and Romania, have played in piloting a wider expansion of overseas Chinese stations than was known until the organization’s revelations came out.

Among the new allegations raised by the group are: a Chinese citizen was coerced to return home by agents working undercover in an overseas Chinese police station in a suburb of Paris, recruited expressly for that purpose, in addition to an earlier revelation of that two more Chinese exiles were forcibly returned from Europe – one to Serbia, the other to Spain.

Who runs the police stations?

Safeguard Defenders, which scours official Chinese open-source documents for evidence of alleged human rights abuses, said it had identified four different police jurisdictions under China’s Ministry of Public Security, active in at least 53 countries, covering all four corners. across the globe, ostensibly to help expatriates from these parts of China with their overseas needs.

Beijing has denied it is using undeclared police forces outside its territory, with the foreign ministry telling the CNN in November: “We hope that the relevant parties will stop exaggerating to create tensions. Using this as a pretext to vilify China is unacceptable.”

Instead, China claimed the facilities are administrative hubs, set up to help Chinese expatriates with tasks like renewing their driver’s licenses. China also said the offices were a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has left many citizens stranded in other countries and outside China, unable to renew documentation.

When approached by CNN last month, following Safeguard Defenders’ original claims, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that overseas stations were staffed by volunteers. However, the organization’s latest report states that a police network it examined hired 135 people for its first 21 precincts.

The organization also secured a three-year contract for a contract worker at a foreign station in Stockholm.

Undeclared consular activities outside 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 states that China’s overseas offices predate the pandemic several years .

His reports have led to investigations in at least 13 different countries so far and ignited an increasingly heated diplomatic row between China and nations like Canada, home to a large Chinese diaspora.

China is not the only superpower accused of employing extrajudicial means to target law enforcement targets or for the purpose of political persecution abroad.

Russia, for example, has been accused on two occasions of planting lethal chemicals and radioactive substances on British soil in an attempt to assassinate its former spies – accusations that Russia has consistently denied.

In the United States, the CIA was embroiled in a scandal over the extraordinary rendition of suspected terrorists from the streets of Italy to Guantanamo Bay after 9/11.

However, the suggestion of a large-scale crackdown on Chinese nationals in foreign countries comes at a crucial time for a nation grappling with its own unrest at home amid fatigue from the country’s restrictive Covid-zero policy, while the third Leader Xi Jinping’s term in power begins.

Last week, China indicated it would loosen some of its pandemic restrictions, three years after the onset of Covid-19.

As the world’s second-largest economy, China has developed an increasingly deep relationship with many of the countries where the new police stations were reportedly found, raising awkward questions for national governments that balance commercial interests with national security.

China signs police patrol agreements with nations

Italy, which has signed a series of bilateral security deals with China under successive governments since 2015, has remained silent during revelations of alleged activities on its soil.

Between 2016 and 2018, Italian police carried out several joint patrols with Chinese police – first in Rome and Milan – and then in other cities, including Naples, where, at the same time, says Safeguard Defenders, they found evidence that a system of Video surveillance was added to a Chinese residential area ostensibly “to effectively deter crimes there”.

In 2016, an Italian police official told NPR that joint policing “would lead to broader international cooperation, information exchange and resource sharing to combat the criminal and terrorist groups that plague our countries.”

The NGO determines that Italy hosted 11 Chinese police stations, including in Venice and in Prato, near Florence.

A ceremony in Rome to mark the opening of a new police station was attended by Italian police in 2018, according to videos posted on Chinese websites, demonstrating the close ties between the two countries’ police forces.

Earlier this year, Italian newspaper La Nazione reported that local investigations at one of the stations had uncovered no illegal activity. Il Foglio quoted police chiefs recently as saying that the stations were not of particular concern as they appeared to be merely bureaucratic.

The Italian foreign and interior ministries did not respond to questions from the CNN 🇧🇷

China also struck similar joint police patrol deals with Croatia and Serbia between 2018 and 2019, as part of the country’s growing strategic footprint along the path of Xi’s defining foreign policy, dubbed the Belt and Road Initiative.

Chinese officers were seen on a joint patrol with their Croatian counterparts in the streets of the capital Zagreb in July this year, Chinese media reported.

A Zagreb police official interviewed by Xinhua said patrols are essential to “protect and attract foreign tourists”.

A 2019 report by Reuters said Chinese officials joined Serbian officials on patrol in Belgrade to help deal with the influx of Chinese tourists. A Serbian official observed that the Chinese did not have the power to make arrests.

Safeguard Defenders also says Chinese stations have gained a foothold in South Africa and nearby nations thanks to a similar agreement with Pretoria that has been in place for years.

China began laying the groundwork for closer police ties with police agencies in South Africa nearly two decades ago, later establishing a network of what are officially called “Chinese Overseas Service Centers” in cooperation with the government of Africa. of the South, thanks to successive bilateral security agreements.

China’s consulate in Cape Town said the plan “unites all communities, both South Africans and foreign nationals in South Africa”.

Since its inception, the structure has “actively prevented crimes against the community and significantly reduced the number of cases”, the consulate said, noting that the centers are non-profit associations without “law enforcement authority”.

South African government officials frequently appear in Chinese media expressing support for the centers and saying their work has helped the police deepen their relationship with Chinese expatriates living there, according to a 2019 report by the Jamestown China Brief.

THE CNN contacted the South African Police Service but has yet to receive a comment.

China tries to return people against their will

Safeguard Defenders stumbled across police networks as it tried to gauge the scale of China’s efforts to persuade some of its inhabitants to return to China, even against their will, which, based on official Chinese data, could amount to nearly a quarter of a million people. people around the world. world during Xi’s time in power.

“What we see coming from China are increasing attempts to quell dissent around the world, to threaten people, harass people, make sure they are afraid enough to remain silent or else be returned to China against their will,” said Safeguard Defenders campaign director Laura Harth.

“It will start with phone calls. They might start bullying your relatives in China, threatening you, doing whatever they can to persuade overseas targets to come back. If that doesn’t work, they’ll use undercover agents abroad. They will send them from Beijing and use methods like seduction and entrapment,” Harth said.

The French interior ministry declined to comment on the allegation that a Chinese national was coerced into returning home by a Chinese police station in a Paris suburb.

Reports provoke anger and investigations

The revelations sparked outrage in some countries and silence in others.

Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Committee on Homeland Security that he was deeply concerned about the revelations. “It’s outrageous to think that the Chinese police would try to set up in, you know, New York, say, without proper coordination. This violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial cooperation and law enforcement processes,” he said.

Ireland has closed the Chinese police station located on its territory, while the Netherlands, which has taken similar measures, has an ongoing investigation, as does Spain.

Harth said to CNN that the organization is likely to 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 they’re going to expand those operations, so we’re going to take that seriously.”

“This is a time when countries must consider that it is a matter of upholding the rule of law and human rights in their countries, both for the people of China and for everyone else around the world,” she said.