Hungary recently announced an agreement “allowing Chinese police officers to patrol in Hungary alongside their Hungarian counterparts.” It sounds like the premise of a bad buddy movie and makes so little sense that one Hungarian official could explain it only by saying that the Chinese officers will act as unarmed interpreters.
Are there that many lost tourists seeking directions? That many Chinese soccer hooligans roaming the streets of Budapest?
Preceding Hungary’s deal was the stationing of police in Serbia and Italy— although, in light of the controversy over Chinese police stations that erupted in about 2022, the Italians ended that setup.
Serbia, Italy, and Hungary have engaged with Chinese police directly. But Chinese police stations staffed by “volunteers” began springing up worldwide in 2016. Spain-based rights group Safeguard Defenders published extensive reports on these in 2022.
The response
The investigations of Safeguard Defenders had the effect of embarrassing governments into taking action. For example:
● When “a Hong Kong protester was dragged into the Chinese consulate in Manchester, UK, and beaten up by consular staff,” it generated public scrutiny of a London property office serving as an “overseas police service station” (to use the communist term).
● Dutch media reported a dissident refugee in the Netherlands “has received threats and abuse from the [Chinese] police service station in Rotterdam, including a phone call telling him ‘to go back to China to solve [his] problems,’ and to ‘think about [his] parents.’ In response to the revelations, the Dutch government said the secret police stations were illegal, and that it was launching an investigation and would take appropriate action.”
● “In Ireland, the government ordered the closure of a police station in central Dublin—which even featured a sign advertising its presence as the ‘Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station.’ ”
● U.S. prosecutors arrested two New York City police station “volunteers” on “charges of conspiring to act as agents for China and obstruction of justice.” Their Chinatown police office was closed at the end of 2022. Prosecutors said that the accused “belong to an elite task force known as the 912 Special Project Working Group, whose purpose is to ‘target Chinese dissidents located throughout the world, including in the United States.’ ”
In late 2022, FBI chief Christopher Wray told U.S. senators that communist policing showed a “clear pattern” of Beijing “exporting their repression” that includes “harassing, stalking, surveilling, blackmailing people who they just don’t like or who disagree with the Xi regime.”
He said that we’re seeing the Chinese government “resort to blackmail, threats of violence, stalking and kidnappings. They’ve actually engaged criminal organisations in the US, offering them bounties in hopes of successfully taking targets back to China.”
The numbers
Judged by their repatriations, the volunteer police have been quite successful. For instance, according to a conservative estimate based on “PRC official statements, press conferences and propaganda pieces…the vast majority of over 12,000 coerced returns from over 120 countries and regions between 2014 and 2023 under flagship operations Fox Hunt and Sky Net took place extrajudicially.”
Radio Free Asia gives a higher number of victims: “Between April 2021 and July 2022, Chinese police ‘persuaded’ 230,000 alleged fugitives to return to China ‘voluntarily’ while admitting not all their targets had committed any crimes.”
Interesting that such a large portion of resident Chinese in America would be so obnoxious to Beijing. Shame if we don’t use such to watch their communist countrymen stateside.
For their part, communist officials hang their hat on the distinction between government employed police and volunteers. Last year, “Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said there was ‘no such thing as an overseas police station,’ and accused the U.S. of ‘smears and political manipulation.’ ”
But the distinction won’t stand: the two “volunteers” arrested in New York “were acting under the direction and control of an official from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security,” according to the Justice Department.
“Volunteer” police are proxies. They report to specific government entities; that’s the basis of any help or harm they can offer.
Meanwhile, the heat is off those governments of 50-plus countries where the illegal police stations are set up. The reports issued by Safeguard Defenders have become old news now, and stories that trickle out involve court cases still in progress. A recent U.S. example involves the federal indictment of 40 Ministry of Public Security employees for harassing dissidents in America. The accused are Chinese civil servants in China—inaccessible. Symbolism, anyone?
Looks like a bad case of “Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Unless…
We do have one promising story this week. The communist intel services have been setting up state-chartered non-profits like the St. Louis Overseas Chinese Service Center, seven so far. They seem to perform the same work as the illegal volunteer offices. The Missouri attorney general is going after the OCSC in St. Louis.
If a few good stories flow from this, let pressure on our governments resume. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
Also see:
Safeguard Defenders: “Involuntary Returns: China’s covert operation to force ‘fugitives’ overseas back home” (January 2022)
“This report goes into detail to explain how each type [of involuntary return] is carried out, along with extensive data and case studies. We also include an analysis of the legal framework created by China as late as 2018 to legalise and regulate repatriations including involuntary returns that have been carried out in over 120 countries. This includes an official legal interpretation outlining the use of kidnapping.”
Safeguard Defenders: “110 Overseas: Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild” (September 2022)
Safeguard Defenders: “Patrol and Persuade: A follow-up investigation to 110 Overseas” (December 2022)
Safeguard Defenders: “Chasing Fox Hunt: Tracing the PRC’s Forced Return Operations around the Globe” (April 2024)
