There are over 100 such overseas stations around the world, according to a new report by the human-rights watchdog Safeguard Defenders.
There are over 100 such overseas stations around the world, according to a new report by the human-rights watchdog Safeguard Defenders.
A new report has uncovered three more Chinese “overseas service stations” operating illegally on U.S. soil, after one such outpost was identified in New York City in September.
The law-enforcement arms of several Chinese provinces are carrying out operations in dozens of foreign countries, including the U.S., according to that report, released Monday by the human-rights watchdog Safeguard Defenders. The Madrid-based organization, working from Chinese public-source records, identified 54 stations in addition to those it had already found in a previous study, bringing the total number of known Chinese police stations to 102 such outposts across 53 different countries.
The purpose of the stations, Chinese officials have claimed, is to assist Chinese citizens overseas with administrative issues, but Safeguard Defenders characterizes their existence as “a severe breach of territorial and judicial sovereignty — even if they were to provide ‘only’ consular services such as the renewal of passports or driver’s licenses.”
Safeguard Defenders has also documented several cases in which these foreign outposts have played a role in illicit operations to force the repatriation of Chinese nationals wanted by the authorities back home, linking the stations to Beijing’s Operation Foxhunt and Sky Net global kidnapping campaigns.
Monday’s report details the existence of three more stations in the U.S., in New York, Los Angeles, and at one additional U.S. location that Safeguard Defenders could not ascertain. The New York and Los Angeles stations operate under the Wenzhou province’s Public Security Bureau, while the Nantong Public Security Bureau runs the third newly identified station.
This brings the total number of U.S. stations to four; in a previous report, the group uncovered the existence of a station, run by the security services of Fuzhou city, in New York City. The report identifying the Fuzhou-linked station in Manhattan did not specify the activities that it has carried out, though a series of media reports has shed more light on its activities.
The New York Post found the station at an office suite in Manhattan’s Chinatown owned by the America Changle Association, which is a purported nonprofit group whose tax-exempt status was rescinded by the IRS in May after it failed to submit several years’ worth of tax filings.
In addition, a Newsweek reporter recently visited that location, finding two formally dressed men in dark suits inside. “We just help some organizations in China dock here,” one of them told the outlet. “Mostly we help people to renew documents, things they couldn’t do during COVID because no one could go home.” The other man reportedly hit an elevator button repeatedly during that exchange, and when the elevator arrived, they both left quickly.
The overseas police station at that location was also preceded by a mediating body linked to China’s Changle court, per Chinese-language media reports in New York found by Newsweek.
After the revelation about the first New York facility came to light, the FBI confirmed that it is aware of the overseas stations.
During a Senate hearing last month, FBI director Christopher Wray said that he’s “very concerned” by the existence of the Chinese police stations. “It is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop in New York without proper coordination,” he added. “It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law-enforcement cooperation processes.”
House Republicans have also written letters demanding answers from the Justice Department, State Department, and IRS on the matter.
Although there’s not yet any publicly available information specifically linking Chinese overseas police stations in the U.S. to other vectors of Beijing’s international-influence and harassment campaigns, the Justice Department has in recent months intensified its crackdown on such activities, charging and indicting alleged Chinese agents involved in several espionage schemes across the United States.
The initial Safeguard Defenders report set off a flurry of media coverage of the Chinese police stations located in Canada and European countries, and there are at least a dozen law-enforcement investigations underway in those jurisdictions.