NYC’s Secret Chinese Police Station Just One of 100 ‘Outposts’ Worldwide

Prosecutors accuse two NYC residents of conspiring with China’s government and destroying electronic evidence, but are the US allegations just the tip of the iceberg?

Ireland’s Foreign Affairs ministry moved quickly when authorities discovered a Chinese ‘police service station’ operating in Dublin without permission, ordering it to close in October 2022. Two months later, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said the Netherlands had also ordered two ‘Illegal and secret’ police stations run by China to shut down.

The FBI’s arrest of two New Yorkers running a Chinese police station in lower Manhattan - allegedly tied to the Fuzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau - puts Beijing’s ‘outposts’ in a new, criminal light. Chen Jinping and ‘Harry’ Lu Jianwang were charged on April 17, 2023, with obstructing justice and conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government. The US Justice Department accuses them of intimidating Chinese dissidents in America on China’s behalf.

China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has said that its ‘outposts’ simply help citizens abroad deal with administrative work such as renewing driving licenses following the disruption of the Covid-19 outbreak. Furthermore, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told CNN that allegations of wrongdoing were smear tactics: “We hope that relevant parties stop hyping it up to create tensions. Using this as a pretext to smear China is unacceptable.”
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A network of secretive outposts‍

A report by Madrid-based human rights group Safeguard Defenders said the Chinese stations are part of a worldwide network of more than 100 overseas law enforcement offices operating in 53 countries, some of which have been known to ‘persuade’ Chinese emigrants to return home, sometimes to face criminal charges.

While Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other international forces are still investigating the outposts, some governments have welcomed China’s assistance. Italy, for example, hosts the largest number of ‘shadow’ police stations worldwide, and established two European ‘pilot’ stations in Milan in 2016 (by Wenzhou police) and in 2018 (by Qingtian police), according to the NGO Safeguard Defenders.

In Spain, however, where China has nine outposts, Safeguard Defenders claims the Madrid station has ties to illegal policing: “Evidence from the Chinese government itself now shows that one station in Madrid has been actively working with Chinese police to engage in covert and illegal policing operations in Spain.”

While the exact number of outposts worldwide are not known, the NGO said it has uncovered 110 overseas police ‘service stations’ so far.

“This is yet another example of President Xi’s aggressive, whole-of-government approach regarding China’s projection of power diplomatically, politically, economically, militarily and in the realm of intelligence,” said Dr. Kenneth Dekleva, a SPYEX consultant and senior fellow at the George W.H. Bush Foundation for US-China relations. “It is impressive, probing responses - similar to the balloon - and very forward-leaning, in part because it combines both hard power and soft power projection. It is a sustained, long-term, strategic approach, which makes Xi and China a formidable adversary."

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Digital security concerns‍

The Chinese police outposts are not the only security concern. On the same day as the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced the charges against the two men for running a secret police station in New York, the DoJ said it was also involved in two other criminal cases that accuse dozens of China’s National Police with various crimes linked to targeting US residents with fake social media accounts on Twitter and other platforms, harassing/trolling Chinese dissidents, and infiltrating a US telecommunications company to remove dissidents from company’s platform.

“In one case by covertly spreading propaganda to undermine confidence in our democratic processes and, in another, by suppressing US video conferencing users’ free speech,” according to allegations by acting assistant director Kurt Ronnow of the FBI Counterintelligence Division. The video conferencing platform was reportedly Zoom

All of the defendants involved in the second and third criminal cases are believed to reside in China and are not under arrest in the US. Many of those accused are alleged to be members of a Ministry of Public Security unit called the '912 special project working group' which pursues dissidents abroad.

“As alleged, the Chinese government deploys an elite task force of its national police - the 912 Special Project Working Group - as a troll farm to attack Chinese dissidents in our country for exercising free speech in a manner that the PRC government disfavors, and spread disinformation and propaganda to sow divisions within the United States,” US Attorney Breon Peace said.

FBI director Christopher Wray described the allegations against the Chinese nationals as a series of “brazen and aggressive criminal schemes directed by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security”.

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The Digital Silk Road

Concern about China’s online influence and its ability to conduct cyber espionage has been increasing in the US for years. Charity Wright, a former NSA and US Army analyst, has been collecting Chinese intelligence since 2007 but when Wright published her 2021 report outlining China's digital influence readers were stunned.

Wright’s data revealed that not only is the balance of global power clearly shifting to Beijing but that China’s espionage may shape the future of the world. “Are they teaching these other regimes around the world how to implement this technology in the same way against minorities, against religious groups, against pro-democracy movements?” Wright said in a conversation with the SPYSCAPE True Spies podcast.

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Kenneth Dekleva is a senior fellow with the George H. W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations. The views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations. Dr. Dekleva can be contacted for speaking and other engagements at SPYEX.com.