According to Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, the United States is extremely concerned about the Chinese government setting up unlicensed “police stations” in American cities in order to potentially conduct influence operations.
Human rights group Safeguard Defenders, located in Europe, revealed the existence of dozens of Chinese police “service stations” in major cities all over the world, including New York, in a study released in September.
The Biden administration has been questioned by Republicans in Congress about their influence.
According to the article, Beijing’s efforts to persuade some Chinese nationals or their relatives living overseas to return to China and face criminal prosecution are being continued by the stations. Additionally, it connected them to the actions of China’s United Front Work Department, a Communist Party organization in charge of exporting its propaganda and sway abroad.
“This concerns me a great deal. Wray acknowledged the issue but declined to go into specifics about the FBI’s investigation during a meeting of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
However, I find it ridiculous to assume that the Chinese police would try to establish itself, say, in New York, without appropriate planning. It disregards established judicial procedures and breaches sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes.
When Republican Senator Rick Scott questioned whether such stations were against American law, Wray responded that the FBI was “looking into the legal parameters.”
Greg Murphy and Mike Waltz, two Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote letters to the Justice Department in October asking if President Joe Biden’s administration was looking into such stations and making the case that they might be used to harass Americans of Chinese descent.
A request for a response from the Chinese embassy in Washington was not immediately fulfilled.
After a Dutch investigation, its foreign ministry earlier this month denied having such stations in the country. The offices, according to China, assist Chinese citizens with document renewal.
According to Wray, the United States has filed several indictments alleging that the Chinese government has harassed, stalked, surveilled, and blackmailed Americans who oppose Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Since we’re not the only place where this has happened, he added, “It’s a real problem and something that we’re discussing with our overseas partners about, as well.”
In an effort to extradite one of them back to China, the Chinese government is alleged to have waged a surveillance and harassment campaign against a U.S. resident and his family, which is why the United States unveiled criminal allegations in October against seven Chinese people.
It was the most recent complaint brought by the Justice Department against China’s “Operation Fox Hunt” search for individuals Beijing considers criminal suspects abroad.
