The Chinese consulate-general also appears to have a longstanding relationship with the nonprofit group that hosted the station.
Beijing’s consulate-general in Manhattan sent officials to visit the Chinese police station in New York, a recent Justice Department criminal complaint reveals. The appearance by two senior Chinese consular officials at the outpost last year links China’s official diplomatic presence to the illegal police facility.
The Chinese consulate-general also appears to have a longstanding relationship with the nonprofit group that hosted the station, stretching back several years.
Yesterday, federal prosecutors unveiled cases against two U.S. citizens who allegedly played a role in operating the Chinese police station at the behest of Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security, to harass people wanted by Beijing in the U.S. The police station was hosted by the America ChangLe Association, a nonprofit group in which both U.S. citizens held leadership roles.
“Not only was the police station set up on the order of MPS officials, but members of the Chinese Consulate in New York even paid a visit to it after it opened,” said Mike Driscoll, the assistant director of the FBI’s New York office.
The America ChangLe Association hosted officials from the Chinese consulate-general in late April 2022, the FBI learned by searching devices seized during an October 2022 raid on the facility.
“The Association president specifically acknowledged the establishment of the [Chinese police station] to the PRC officials in attendance,” the court filing states. “An open-source video of the Association event depicts two senior [Chinese consulate-general New York] officials located in the vicinity of the [police station] banner and includes the defendant LU JIANWANG as shown below,” it continues, citing a screenshot from the video.
The image in the court document appears edited, presumably by the federal government, to redact the faces of other individuals in the room. However, the faces of Lu, two senior Chinese consular officials, and the association president are labeled with their titles and circled. On the wall to their right is banner that reads “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station.”
The “open-source” video seems to refer to a video of the event posted by the Chinese-language website called “The Voice of Chinese.” Teng Biao, a Chinese human-rights lawyer who was at Tiananmen Square, reviewed the webpage and told NR that it appears to be a news outlet for overseas Chinese operated by an organ of the United Front Work Department. That bureau is tasked with maintaining the Chinese Communist Party’s influence over diaspora communities.
The article identifies several Chinese consular officials in attendance at the America ChangLe meeting besides the two noted in the picture within the criminal complaint. It also says that Wu delivered a speech thanking the association for their work and for supporting the cause of China’s “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan. Subsequently, Lu Jianshun, the association president, spoke. In his remarks, he commended Lu Jianwang for setting up the police station in tandem with the city of Fuzhou’s public security bureau.
Teng told National Review, during an interview in February, that the episode highlights his belief that “I don’t think there are independent [townsmen] organizations,” except for those run by Taiwanese groups. He was referring to groups that gather Chinese immigrants from specific towns and provinces.
Before the police station was established in early 2022, the America ChangLe Association appears to have had a long history of interactions with the Chinese consulate-general going back several years, which the criminal complaint does not address.
In 2018, Chinese consul-general Huang Ping visited the America ChangLe Association office, according to the U.S. version of a news outlet run by China’s Fujian province. Huang is pictured standing right under the seal of the association in a picture featured in the article.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the association also apparently coordinated with the consulate-general and other CCP arms to respond to the crisis, an April 2, 2020, post on the Chinese social-media platform Weibo from a channel called “Changle Broadcasting” indicates. The association apparently assigned several members, including Lu Jianwang, to a team that was responsible for working with the consulate-general, the United Front Work Department, and the Overseas Chinese Federation on issues related to the pandemic.
The criminal complaint also reveals another aspect of Chinese government-run influence operations on U.S. soil. It alleges that Lu told FBI agents that the Chinese consulate-general in New York paid members of CCP-linked associations $60 to participate in protests against Falun Gong practitioners.
“People would not just travel from New York but also from Philadelphia. Several hundred people would go every time,” he said.
In a statement to National Review, the Chinese consulate-general’s press office accused the U.S. of peddling “political manipulation” multiple times and claimed that, “the U.S. drew malignant association between overseas Chinese service centers and Chinese diplomatic and consular officials and made groundless accusations against China.”
Asserting that there’s no factual basis for the allegations made in the complaint, the consulate-general further said, “there are simply no so-called ‘overseas police stations.’ 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 hope relevant parties will not hype up or dramatize this.”
For its part, the State Department declined to comment on the matter. When National Review reached out with a series of questions about the role of Chinese consular officials in the police station, a department spokesperson only referred NR to the Justice Department. A Justice Department spokesperson referred NR to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, which, in turn, declined to comment.