A building in New York’s Chinatown was reportedly raided late last year as part of the FBI’s efforts to rein in a secretive Chinese police force accused of gathering intelligence on the Chinese diaspora and harassing dissidents.
According to the New York Times, a Chinese outpost on the third floor of the six-story office building was conducting police operations without jurisdiction or diplomatic approval from US officials.
The FBI counterintelligence agents conducted the raid in collaboration with the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn as part of the US government’s crackdown on communist China’s notorious effort to surveil their citizens, hunt down dissidents abroad, and force them to return to China.
“Operation Fox Hunt” refers to China’s global effort, which is present in many countries around the world.
China, which is notorious for making blatantly false statements, attempted to downplay what these police centers do, claiming that it was simply a group of volunteers assisting people in obtaining things like a driver’s license.
The Times examined numerous internal Chinese reports that revealed Chinese officials bragging about the effectiveness of “overseas police service centers,” which collect intelligence for the Chinese government. Many of the reports were later removed from China’s internet.
“It’s extremely worrying from the human rights perspective. We’re essentially allowing the Chinese diaspora to be controlled by [communist China] rather than subject to our national laws,” said Igor Merheim-Eyre, an adviser to a Slovakian member of the European Parliament. “That obviously has a huge impact — not only for our relations with the Chinese diaspora across Europe but also has huge implications for national sovereignty.”
One example of the Chinese attempting to conceal their actions occurred in Europe when a Hungarian lawmaker stated that he visited a Chinese police station clearly labeled “Qingtian Police Overseas Service Station.” The signs vanished as soon as the legislator mentioned what he saw.
“The Chinese government wants to have more influence and to extend their transnational policing,” said Chen Yen-ting, a Taiwan-based researcher. “It’s a long-arm power to show their own citizens inside China that their government is so strong. We have the power to reach globally, and even if you go out, you’re still under our control.”
A Chinese dissident in Europe told The Times that he was “extremely concerned” about China’s secret police offices because “there’s nothing we can do about it.”
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