The purpose of the so-called police stations or service centers that the Chinese government has set up in many countries is not to help locals catch muggers and bank robbers. It is to harass opponents of the Chinese Communist Party, sometimes even to kidnap Chinese nationals and forcibly return them to China.
U.S. Senator Mitt Romney and U.S. Senator Mike Lee, who both represent Utah, were tipped off about the stations by a July 10, 2023 report in the Daily Caller by Philip Lenczycki:
A Chinese intelligence agency quietly operates “service centers” in seven American cities, all of which have had contact with Beijing’s national police authority, according to state media reports and government records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Work Department (UFWD)—which at least one U.S. government commission has characterized as a “Chinese intelligence service”—operates so-called “Overseas Chinese Service Centers” (OCSCs) that are housed within various U.S.-based nonprofits….
Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn told the DCNF it was a “direct violation of our nation’s sovereignty” for the CCP to “set up shop on our soil to threaten, surveil and kidnap Chinese American citizens with a dissenting opinion.” . . .
The FBI has accused the [Ministry of Public Security] of conducting “transnational repression” schemes in the U.S. targeting Chinese dissidents and human rights activists.
[The most notorious of these schemes] is operation Fox Hunt. The operation uses “unsanctioned, unilateral and illegal practices, including coercion, extortion and intimidation” to “forcibly repatriate” alleged Chinese criminals living overseas, according to a 2020 DOJ complaint.
We must keep in mind that according to the Chinese government, a “criminal” is anyone who criticizes or protests against the Chinese government. The bounties that in July 2023 the Hong Kong Police placed on the heads of several such protesters currently living overseas suggest the mentality motivating the stations.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports:
Following a report in the right-wing Daily Caller, Lee and Romney joined with eight of their Senate Republican colleagues in a letter expressing “grave concerns” about “Overseas Chinese Service Centers” housed by nonprofit organizations….
“OCSCs have openly operated for several years, and their activities have been reportedly documented in Chinese state media and social media posts,” the letter reads. “The DOJ must ensure that our adversaries, such as the CCP, are not operating intelligence operations or engaging in repression on U.S. soil.”
The senators have requested the DOJ brief them or their staffers on the OCSCs by the end of the month.
The passing dig at the Daily Caller for being “right-wing”—for noticing CCP predations?—doesn’t alter the reality of what’s happening. The call to thwart and shut down the persecution stations should in any case be bipartisan.
